Ok this post will be quite short as nothing exciting happened whilst I was in London. I pretty much overslept and caught up with some much needed sleep. The hotel was the crappiest thing ever. They had put me up in the basement of the hotel. Everything in the hotel looked soooo cheap. Emirates is known for putting it’s crew in decent hotels but this one is far from it. My room was below ground level, my window was overlooking the pavement and busy road into London Heathrow Airport. The corridors stunk big time and the food was mesmerisingly disgusting. I will not mention the name of the hotel. But let me tell you, the Marriott a few meters further is a better option !
Now. The best part of the layover was definately both the flight there and the one back. Usually LHRs are busy as hell, in all cabins, leaving us as fresh as expired maquerels… We end using our layover to recover and get some rest before the almighty leg back to the sandpit.
The problem on many UK destination is not the general passenger profile or the destination in itself. It is the high probability of having overly intoxicated passengers who become a nuisance for passengers around them and harrass the crew every so often for a drink they really don’t need. Most airports in the UK have pubs and bars in every lounge making it difficult for passengers to resist to their sins. I understand they might want a drink or two before a flight to wind down after the security screenings and all the stress of the check in but that doesn’t mean we, as trapped cabin crew at 39,000 ft above sea level, have to deal with such individuals. We have other shit to deal with. We rely on ground staff to spot and deny access to the aircraft to whoever is apparently drunk and may cause a riot. Unfortunately, it is way too common to see that UK airports have slacked quite a fair bit on that matter. Therefor, leaving us to deal with a potentially dangerous situation for the aircraft itself, for us as Cabin Crew and ultimately for the passengers safety.
So. We had two drunk passengeres on the way over. A loud, verbally abusive brit claiming to be extremely anxious and acting like a twat for half the flight before falling flat on the floor and sleeping amongst the used paper tissues, the dirty blankets and other smelling feet. It’s a beautiful sight I can tell you! At least he fell asleep but didn’t miss on being a right ass of himself. Putting on a show for the rest of the cabin during boarding and after take-off.
The second specimen we had was a Saudi man who was supposedly going for surgery on his kidney and getting it replaced. But that didn’t fly very high with us as soon as we saw him down beers like he’d never drank one before, asking for more and more and more. The funny thing with drunk passengers is to see to which extent they will go to grab a drink from us. Like we do not communicate between crew, they’ll try and charm a naive looking Korean crew and get a drink from them…. until they try at opening cart and bars themselves. That’s when it becomes dangerous. At that point we had to nearly carry him to his seat and buckle him down. He was getting loud and other passengers were getting fed up with him. We moved is seat neighbour away so he could sleep it off. That was the best move we made. He slept for the rest of the flight !
The whole trip went crescendo, the last and funniest drunk pax was a middle-aged man travelling with his son. He drank a lot of alcohol before the flight and managed to pass our radar. It’s just after take-0ff that things went down the wrong path. This particular passenger had his son with him. And ohhh dear did I feel sorry for that little 9 year old chap. Coming down to the galley to apologize on behalf of his father. He too finally went to sleep after coming down the galley to play with the carts and slow down our preps for the service. He was kindly pushed back to his seat. I laughed out loud when, upon disembarking the aircraft, I saw in a distance, his familiar face. The guy was collecting a lot of Emirates Inflight magazine and carrying them out. By the time he got out of the cabin, the man had nearly 20 of them piled up in his hands. To other passengers disbelief. He finally left them to the crew in charge at the door.
The common point between all these passengers is the way we managed to deal with them. We used the Broken Record Technique of which I learned in DRUNK CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT CRASH COURSE while I was working for the pubs back in Paris. All you have to do is repeat the same thing over and over again until the guy gets uber-bored with you. Ask them to follow you wherever you want them to be (they always follow if you ask them, it’s kinda weird). Repeat the same shit over again and finally they will cooperate/just leave. It worked pretty well for these three.
And to finish off, here some Jetiquette you must follow :
- Appreciate your own personal space and others will appreciate yours — 46 per cent of passengers hate people encroaching on their space. Stretching your legs out, widening your arms above your neighbours’ head and generally fidgeting will do little to endear you to your fellow flyers. Try to get comfortable at the beginning of the flight. While sitting, flex your wrists, neck and ankles at regular intervals, and during toilet breaks take the opportunity to fully stretch.
- Saucy canoodling under the blankets is out. No one else wants to watch your passionate embraces and 28 per cent of passengers actually complain about couples making out on flights. Besides, if you get carried away you could find yourself in court.
- Don’t tell your life story to the person next to you. Small talk is OK but bores are a bugbear for 12 per cent of travellers. Keep it polite and chatty but remember that silence is golden.
- If you are listening to a CD player keep the volume down to a level where only you can hear it. The only thing more irritating than loud music is tinny music played through someone else’s headphones. It’s a pain for 10 per cent of holiday-makers.
- Don’t shout at friends and family across the aisle of the plane. It might be the only holiday you get all year and you are excused for being excited. But it doesn’t mean you have to deafen the person next to you by yelling at the rest of your party. More than four per cent of people who fly gave it as a major annoyance.
Next trip in New York ! Not expecting much of the flight but hope the layover will be good !
You describe well what I just went through with my Glasglow flight I should copy paste it to my blog lol
Wow… you guys just know how to do it.
I got a question, when this ppl board the plane, do they pretend to be sover? Or they just come singing thrughout the boarding gate? haha
There’s various stages at which to decide wether or not we should let one fly. If a drunk hasn’t been spotted before boarding and closing the doors it’s too bad for us. We have to deal with it up in the air. Obviously, if visibly drunk and acting like a complete fool, yes one would be refused boarding until deemed fit to fly. They can also act somehat sober and then it’s hard to spot.
Sadly people have worked out that they have to sober up for the few minutes it takes to get past the crew at the door. Then it’s game on. I just pretend I haven’t heard what they said and keep offering coffee.
That, or we all become goldfish and forget that drunk passenger who asked us for a beer 6 times already! It’s always “I’ll be right back…”… and then don’t >:)
Where do you get these percentages from?
The guy in the photo is sitting in a blue seat while all of the other seats are orange. What’s up with that?
Wow!! It’s a good thing you know how to handle this kind of situations. Honestly, this is what scares me to become a flight attendant. =)
Trick question:
Are Saudi men allowed to drink?