“There’s a higher percentage of people who are completely inexperienced with traveling on an airplane.”
To get a sense of what air travel has been like for the cabin crews witnessing post-lockdown Americans at their most boisterous—and sometimes ugliest—Slate spoke with Brian, a flight attendant based out of San Francisco and working for Alaska Airlines. Brian worked as a flight attendant for five years before taking a voluntary furlough during the pandemic. He was recalled in January and has been working since. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
There was this one guy on a flight from Seattle to Dallas, and he just would not keep his mask on. He would pull it up there in front of us, and then just put it back down once we were out of sight. We have a card system at my airline. We didn’t have it before COVID. The yellow card essentially tells you you’ve been found to be in violation of federal mandates by the TSA and we’re going to report this incident, and there could be follow-up and penalties.
Everybody else that I’ve asked, it really just hasn’t been that bad. I feel like I’m lucky to be based in and do a lot of my flying on the West Coast. Portland, Seattle, L.A., San Diego were all pretty good about complaints. It was only flying to certain destinations where the mask problem and liquor problems got to be more of an issue. And we don’t have as many of those routes. Maybe excluding Vegas. Vegas is always a problem.
I have mixed feelings about it. Generally speaking, it’s no big deal, most people can control themselves with alcohol. But it’s a touchy subject, because we’re in a self-contained tube and we’re up in the air and away from emergency services should shit hit the fan. So I don’t mind serving alcohol, but I also understand. When somebody cannot control themselves well and is misbehaving in that environment, it can become dangerous for, you know, over 100 people.
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