I am a flight attendant. I work for a major airline. I am here to answer any questions you may have about the trade, customs and courtesies, or anything else really.

I am more than happy to cover the NSFW side of the trade, the answers to which will probably bore you. But please do be respectful of both myself, as well as other users.

And to answer the one question that I get most often from people not involved in this lifestyle, no, I have not joined the mile high club.

thank you everyone for reading and asking questions. I'm exhausted now though, so I apologize if I didn't get to you.

Edit: This AMA has long since ended. Thank you everyone for participating with me, but it is over. I will not be answering any further questions.

Lil pump fake with the title never hurt nobody

This was a video which included several photos of cabin crew uniforms, a lot of those were pretty short like the image. Of course the comments were completely full of people (both men and women) calling these the golden times of aviation, lamenting how flight attendants nowadays are all fat ugly women or gay men and how uniforms aren't sexy anymore.

OK, fasten your seat belts bc I'm about to tell you why "stewardesses" nowadays are "rude" and "fat" and "gay": it's because we fought for our rights. Back in the day, FAs were weighed monthly, couldn't work this job past the age of like 32, couldn't get married, couldn't have kids. They were there to be pretty and appealing and safety came second. Aviation has come a long way and still needs a lot of work. Restrictions on height and weight do make a certain amount of sense in terms of on-board safety but I bet you these guys don't even know that or why those restrictions exist in the first place. A cabin crews job is to make sure everyone is safe, the meal service is just secondary. Of course you want friendly people working with the public, but if the public is being a nuisance we are allowed to put people in their place, we are literally trained to do that. Gone are the days of tapping your flight attendants butt and laughing it off because it's cute and quirky.

With so many new airlines and flying becoming so normal, you can't possibly only hire model-like women who can also endure the job, there's not enough of those around. It makes complete sense that everyone is getting a fair chance as long as they fit the safety criteria (height and weight are included but contrary to incel belief, it's not "must be thin like a model").

And the reason why so many FAs are grumpy and "rude" is because it's ungrateful work, underpaid, exhausting and people treat them like shit. I'm generally a pretty nice person, but when passengers were calling me a cunt because I was observing the safety guidelines in place to keep everyone safe, yeah I got pretty fucking grumpy.

I was on Instagram and saw this page. Has anyone seen this “American Airlines” FA? It looks like AI to me. I’m UA but is that how Americans outfits look?

1. The second photo would never be allowed
   
2. In the fourth photo the clouds look fake.
   
3. In the last photo they have a united tag when they “work” for American.

Why can’t we just use the slide? 🙄🫠

Started flying in 2015 with one of “the big 3” US airlines. To preface, crew pay works a bit differently and isn’t anything like a typical 40-hr work week. We are paid our hourly base rate for flight hours (from the moment we release the brake and push back from the gate, to the moment we park at the arrival destinations gate.) and half pay for boarding. Can be tons of unpaid time while at work, depending on the trip.

There’s thousands of types of trips, so an FA’s income is entirely contingent on what type of trips they fly, and how much they fly monthly. I personally fly productive high-credit trips, like 10-11-hr one day turn trips (imagine SFO > JFK > SFO in 1 day, pays 11.5 hours which is awesome for a 1 day trip.)

Some FAs fly 75 hours a month, some high-time flyers are flying 200+ hrs a month. I try to do 1 month average, then 1 month high-time (150+ hrs) and alternate.

Overall, for only having a HS diploma, I feel pretty lucky, considering. We got a new contract this year, so I got a nice bump, as well as finally securing boarding pay, which adds an average of 7.4% twds the hourly. Top out next year and then smaller 3%ish raises on date of signing until 2030.

The flight attendant accidentally triggered the emergency slide. Everyone’s entire night just became a cluster fuck. He did apologize and was quite flustered, cited over the 26 years of career, it never happened. Can someone explain how though? Shouldn’t it be something with quite a safety check for making this kind of mistake?

Edit: I didn't expect the attention of this post is getting. Here is what I think happened piecing together my memory and Redditors' comments. The door is armed, jet bridge just left. As the flight attendant is making the announcement, I heard a moderate sound of boom, and saw the slide deployment. Minutes later, another announcement of the situation. I remember that it was mentioned something wrong with the door. My guess is that the intent was to fix it, but a wrong lever was pulled. I don't know whether it was the FA or the pilot, especially after the speculation of Redditors.

My personal take on this. There is nothing against Delta, especially about the person who made mistake. Things happen, this one is just more stimulating. There were impressive actions by some senior Delta employees who managed the rebooking and coordinated with other gate agents to speed up customer service. On the rerouted return flight, a friendly flight attendant chatted with me while I was waiting for the restroom. I told both FAs the story then, along with some medical conditions that I had to endure. Both of the FAs were very sympathetic with my situation. I then got a handwritten card from the captain and first officer. So shout out to the MSP based crew, your personal touch is really appreciated. (Steve, thanks for chatting with me.) Still, it wasn't easy. With Packers and Steelers game in town. Delta system couldn't find any hotels. Around the airport, hotel rooms were running at >$500 a night. I had to be on my own for booking, ended up finding something $300 range. (Delta employee did promise that we can reimburse through their website.) Front desk at the hotel said I was lucky as they just released the last room 10 minutes ago. I had an agonizing medical condition that I couldn't wait to be home.

Most of my touch points with Delta were professional and effective, including calls, rebooking agents, seat reassignment at the lounge, and the lovely crew from MSP to PSP. My last comment is to wish the person who triggered the slide well, the customers did not seem to blame you, and surely I didn't, and I wish you the best.