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 Page A

butter would do the trick. But I didn’t want to just spread it on the floor of the bathroom for fear someone would slip, and then we’d have a whole new problem. So I got a maxi pad out of the lav. The lavs usually have maxi pads, and it’s amazing how many uses we find for them. I peeled the adhesive strip off and stuck it to the bottom of my shoe. I spread the butter all over the maxi pad, and then used my foot to rub the door jamb back and forth. I kept on rubbing in order to blot up most of the butter. And, sure enough, it did the trick! When we deplaned and a new crew came on board, I told an incoming flight attendant, ‘If the door sticks, just put butter on a maxi pad!’ and they looked at me like I was nuts. I guess it’s not that often that you need to use the phrase, ‘Put butter on a maxi pad!’
    “When I was laughing over this story to a male flight attendant, he told me he uses maxi pads all the time to catch the drips from the air conditioning units that trickle down through the overhead bins and drip on the passengers. He told me, ‘People give me the strangest looks when they see me coming out of the lav with maxi pads in my hands!’
    “Then there was the time when I desperately needed to improvise a diaper. Usually when that happens, I look for another parent who’s traveling with a baby and ask if they have a spare diaper. This time, there were no other babies on board. So I pulled the synthetic pillowcase off of the disposable pillow and ripped two holes for the legs in the bottom of it. I put a maxi pad in between the leg holes, and it worked really well! Later when a toddler threw up all over himself and his shirt, the parents didn’t have any spare clothing with them. So I pulled a pillowcase off the pillow, poked a hole for the head and two for the arms, and that kid looked downright stylish in his pillowcase shirt!”
     
    A pilot:
    “One of the things we used to do in the Coast Guard was marine environmental patrols. We were flying a Falcon 200 out of Mobile, Alabama, heading out over the Gulf of Mexico. We were checking for buoy lines and oil spills and carrying a crew of five. Well, our sensor systems operator had a bad case of the runs and was in a lot of discomfort because there weren’t any bathrooms on board. The flight commander suggested he use the box that his lunch came in. So the guy removed his lunch and relieved himself into the box. As you can imagine, the odor permeated the aircraft and you can’t just roll down a window. So the commander had the brilliant idea to open the drop hatch, which is normally used to drop pumps and rafts and rescue gear to vessels in distress, and toss out the box. So we went down to 100 feet, ran through the drop check list, opened the hatch, and the dropmaster tossed out the box. But the force of the wind blew the box back inside the plane where it rolled and tumbled and flew all around, spraying poop everywhere. Suddenly all the commander could hear over the intercom system was guys screaming. He says, ‘Dropmaster, check in!’ and all he heard was screaming. ‘Loadmaster, check in!’ and all he heard was screaming. He thought men were dying back there. Finally they got the drop hatch closed, but it was such a mess that we had to abort the mission and divert back to Mobile.”
     
    Food Follies
    I remember when every stand-up comedian had an airline food joke. Now on most flights there is no food at all, or you have to purchase it. Who would have thought that we would miss the good old days…of bad airline food?!
     
    A flight attendant:
    “It was a long, late flight from New York to Los Angeles. A lot of the passengers were sleeping, so when I made an announcement that we were serving snacks, I spoke quietly into the PA mike so I wouldn’t disturb everyone. I said we had peanuts, cheese and crackers, granola bars, and Biscoff cookies. I then started serving, but when I reached one lady and asked her what she wanted, I had to burst