Flight Attendant Friday: What do Flight Attendants Do?

This question comes from Heather, and it’s another one of those questions that I get asked a lot.

Q.  What do Flight Attendants do during the flight?  I know this depends on many factors like length of flight etc., but what do you guys do after serving the cabin with meals, duty-free, cleaning up the galleys and what not?

A.  I think the focus of this question is on what we do when all the work is done, so that’s the part I’ll share with you.

Once the work is done, Flight Attendants try to stay out of the aisle so that passengers can use the lavatories and move about.  We tend to congregate in the galley (think of it as our office) because we’re out of the way, we have personal space there, and we can have personal items close at hand.

We use this time to have a meal of our own (whether provided by the airline or brought from home), a cup of coffee, and just take a moment to get off of our feet.  We chat with one another, talk about layover plans, and visit with passengers.

While most of our bosses don’t want to hear this, we also use this time to complain about what’s happening at the airlines and not getting the tools we need to do our job.  We may flip through a magazine or read a book (again things our bosses wouldn’t want to hear).  We may work on our monthly bids (the process by which we get our work schedule), clean out our tote bag, pay bills and balance the checkbook, sneak a peak at the movie, or other things that just come under the activity of goofing off.

Of course, then we have to rally to be ready to perform the requisite descent duties.

Really — it’s pretty much the kind of things everyone does to pass the time until it’s quitting time.

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