It Begins With a Crash...

Well, I finally buckled under the pressure & have decided to start up a blog documenting this craziness that I call a job.  Quick rundown (for those of you who know & love me, just skip to paragraph 2 and save yourself 30 seconds of your life):  I am a 32 year old flight attendant from Michigan with 3 years of experience in the industry (first with a tiny regional based out of Detroit and now with a mainline carrier out of NYC).  I love my family & friends, bacon, glitter, nail polish, good looking men that aren't married, cats, petting cats while eating bacon, animal print, high heels, manners & traveling (I think that last one was a given).  I dislike people who chew with their mouths open, mustard, cardboard (don't judge), being broke all of the time, repeating myself, getting no sleep & douchebags.  I mean, this is just a super abbreviated list, but at least we covered the important stuff (you know, like bacon).

Anywho, I decided to finally start this up & am going to preempt all of this with 1) I have no clue what I am doing and 2) this first blog might be a downer, in light of the tragic situation involving flight 214 in SFO that occurred today. In case you have been hiding under a rock all day (or possibly flying for the last 12 hours & don't even know what time zone you're in let alone what happened in the world today...hey, it happens...), check out this link, read, process & come back to paragraph #3.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/asiana-airlines-crash-toll-dead-60-unaccounted/story?id=19595641&singlePage=true#.UdjOCPlJOAg

Today started out like any other day at work; woke up in Vegas at 3:30AM to make my 4:45AM bus & was pretty certain that the hardest part of my day was going to be getting that red dress zipped up by myself (seriously, you have to be a contortionist to get that thing zipped).  Fast forward a few hours later to our boarding a plane in DTW, headed out to SFO.  There I stood in the galley, rocking my best "welcome aboard, please be nice to me the next 5 hours" smile when the gate agent came busting down the jetbridge looking all stressed out (they do that alot, so I still wasn't concerned).  She pulls me aside to tell me we are delayed until 6PM because there was debris on the runway in SFO.  UGH!  DELAYED!  Before I even had a chance to pout about not getting any Chinese food with Xue tonight because now I was going to be on reduced rest (UGH...NO SLEEP), a red coat joined us in the galley and discreetly told me they were pulling everyone off of the plane because there had been a 777 that crashed in SFO & no one was sure of anything besides that.  All of you that know me know that my poker face could use some work, so while they are pulling people off of the flight I am attempting to quietly tell the flight leader the reason this is happening, all while fielding questions. I felt like such a dirty fibber dodging people's questions who had heard half of our super secret squirrel galley convo - telling them that there was a tiny glitch at SFO, I was sure everything was ok & that we would keep them posted as I got the "I wish you weren't a liar" look.

As soon as everyone was off of the plane, all of us were on our smart phones - trying to be the first to find ANY information.  Were there survivors?  What caused it?  Was the aircraft intact?  What airline?  Our captain gave us the quick rundown from dispatch, we turned on the IFE monitors on the plane, then sat & waited for any news on what the company wanted to do with us.  Not to be dramatic, but it was just odd sitting on a 757, surrounded by my crew, watching emergency vehicles hose down a smoking plane that has no tail & is broken in half.

Ask anyone that works on a plane - this is their worst nightmare.  The unthinkable.  What you train for weeks for (and by "train" I mean it is beaten into your head so you would know your commands in your sleep) & what you go back to recurrent training for each year to make sure you STILL know it.  A plane crash.  Even worse, an unanticipated plane crash - one moment you are just chilling in your jumpseat & the next everything has gone to pot.

This is the part where I give HUGE props to the flight crew of 214 because if they didn't know their stuff, more than 2 lives would have been lost.  It is SO EASY to become complacent in our line of work; we do 4-5 flights a day sometimes and I admit I am guilty of forgetting we are in a jet propelled tube of fuselage full of gas that is floating in the sky.  This is the part where ya'll get a lecture - yes, we are there to make sure you get your peanuts & orange juice with 2 cubes of ice with a splash of club soda, but our sole reason to be on that aircraft is your SAFETY.  I think I heard it put best by an old coworker of mine from Mesaba: "we are there to save their asses, not kiss them!".  God forbid it ever happens, but if you are ever in a situation on a plane where there is ANY type of emergency (and no, I do not count you missing your connection an emergency), PLEASE listen to your flight attendants.  We are professionally trained to handle these situations & trust me when I say that training kicks in.  It could mean someone's life being saved (not to be dramatic).

Alright, I think that is enough doom & gloom for now!  I promise the next blog will be more "fun filled", less "airplane apocalypse".  We eventually cancelled the flight & I got to come home tonight, since we were in DTW.  Pretty much appreciating being in my own environment tonight surrounded by familiarity (even if I do have to get up at 4AM); guess today was a little tiny bit of a "how do you do" reminder that in the blink of any eye, everything can change.  Rolled in & everything was just as I left it   - Mom, Dad & Arch are all here and nothing has changed in the last 3 days - sadly, some of the people & their families in the crash today can't say the same thing.  Going to bed tonight saying a prayer for those people & then following that up with a big "thanks".