Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant by Betty N. Thesky, Janet Spencer, Nanette Weston Read Free Book Online
place smells like coffee instead of…um….a lav. We always have these coffee packets on hand to brew coffee for the passengers, and we often just slip an extra one into a clip on the wall of the lav, and we try to remember to replace them after a few days with fresh ones, throwing the old ones away. Well, one of those coffee packets had been hanging on the wall a bit too long, I guess. A young lady went into the lav, wearing white hip-hugger pants and a white high-rise top. (I don’t know why people wear white when they’re traveling.) All of a sudden this packet of coffee disintegrated and coffee grounds rained down upon this woman in her white outfit. She burst out of the lav screeching in alarm because, when something brown rains down upon you in a bathroom, your first thought is not that it’s coffee. It took us quite a while to calm her down and clean her up. We had to work hard to convince her the reason we hang coffee in the lav is to help, and not to terrorize the passengers.”
Betty:
“There was a small boy traveling unaccompanied on one of my flights. He was a very young boy and very short—too short to reach up and latch the lock on the lavatory door which also turns on the light. So I told him I would lock the door from the outside, which would also turn on the light for him, and that I would wait outside the door until he was ready to come out again. Well, he’d been in there a few minutes when another flight attendant signaled me that she needed my help with something. So I walked to the front of the plane to help her, and then a passenger asked me for something, and then somebody else distracted me, and soon I had forgotten all about the little boy and went back to doing beverage service. A few minutes later, I heard something peculiar—a noise I couldn’t place. The noise kept getting louder, and all of a sudden my heart dropped through my socks as I realized it was the little boy, pounding on the door of the lavatory. I unlocked the door and he came out crying and upset, and I felt so bad that because of me, some kid was probably going to need years of therapy to overcome the trauma of being locked in the lavatory.”
An airline mechanic:
“A couple years ago, we were tending an aircraft that had developed a pressurization leak. In order to find the leak, we had to close up the aircraft and then pressurize it. We found the leak and fixed it, but we forgot to depressurize the plane. We discovered this later that evening when the maintenance guy who’s in charge of emptying the lavatories walked up to us, absolutely covered from head to toe in blue goo and sludge. Seems that when he had opened the valve to empty the septic tanks, all that pressure finally found an outlet.”
Random Factoids
• When an air cabin is pressurized, it actually expands the aircraft, like a balloon filling with air.
• The air inside the cabin of a plane is completely replaced with outside air about once every 5 to 10 minutes.
• Pilots are often barred from having beards because the beard prevents an oxygen mask from fitting tightly on the face.
• The average air temperature outside the plane at 35,000 feet (10.7 km) is about 60 degrees below zero F. (-49 degrees C.)
Betty:
“Sometimes on a plane we have to use our wits to find solutions to problems that arise, just like MacGyver used to on the TV show. One day the first class lavatory door was sticking, and it was sticking really badly, so that one person on the inside had to coordinate with another person on the outside—one pushing, one pulling—in order to get the door open. It was really inconvenient because we had a full flight and there were only three bathrooms on board. What we really needed was some lubricant, but we don’t carry any WD-40 on board. So I started thinking of what we had available that would act as a lubricant in a pinch. It was a morning flight, and we had breakfasts to serve, so I wondered if a pat of
Betty:
“There was a small boy traveling unaccompanied on one of my flights. He was a very young boy and very short—too short to reach up and latch the lock on the lavatory door which also turns on the light. So I told him I would lock the door from the outside, which would also turn on the light for him, and that I would wait outside the door until he was ready to come out again. Well, he’d been in there a few minutes when another flight attendant signaled me that she needed my help with something. So I walked to the front of the plane to help her, and then a passenger asked me for something, and then somebody else distracted me, and soon I had forgotten all about the little boy and went back to doing beverage service. A few minutes later, I heard something peculiar—a noise I couldn’t place. The noise kept getting louder, and all of a sudden my heart dropped through my socks as I realized it was the little boy, pounding on the door of the lavatory. I unlocked the door and he came out crying and upset, and I felt so bad that because of me, some kid was probably going to need years of therapy to overcome the trauma of being locked in the lavatory.”
An airline mechanic:
“A couple years ago, we were tending an aircraft that had developed a pressurization leak. In order to find the leak, we had to close up the aircraft and then pressurize it. We found the leak and fixed it, but we forgot to depressurize the plane. We discovered this later that evening when the maintenance guy who’s in charge of emptying the lavatories walked up to us, absolutely covered from head to toe in blue goo and sludge. Seems that when he had opened the valve to empty the septic tanks, all that pressure finally found an outlet.”
Random Factoids
• When an air cabin is pressurized, it actually expands the aircraft, like a balloon filling with air.
• The air inside the cabin of a plane is completely replaced with outside air about once every 5 to 10 minutes.
• Pilots are often barred from having beards because the beard prevents an oxygen mask from fitting tightly on the face.
• The average air temperature outside the plane at 35,000 feet (10.7 km) is about 60 degrees below zero F. (-49 degrees C.)
Betty:
“Sometimes on a plane we have to use our wits to find solutions to problems that arise, just like MacGyver used to on the TV show. One day the first class lavatory door was sticking, and it was sticking really badly, so that one person on the inside had to coordinate with another person on the outside—one pushing, one pulling—in order to get the door open. It was really inconvenient because we had a full flight and there were only three bathrooms on board. What we really needed was some lubricant, but we don’t carry any WD-40 on board. So I started thinking of what we had available that would act as a lubricant in a pinch. It was a morning flight, and we had breakfasts to serve, so I wondered if a pat of
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