Jaunted

Higgins stepped into the world of modern flight attendants recently, flying between Dallas and New York three times over two days on American Airlines. Her verdict: it's hard! By the end of her experiment - in which her colleagues knew she was incognito, but passengers didn't - she learned how to politely say no to passenger requests for blankets, dealt with an hour's delay on an overbooked flight, and lost all feeling in her pinkie toes. But she also gleaned some wisdom about how to keep things in control at 35,000 feet:

I recalled what one flight attendant had told me when I asked about what they do when it looks like a passenger is having too much to drink: Water it down. In coach, where travelers mix the drinks themselves, some attendants invent their own rules -- "I can only sell you one drink an hour."

We've got nothing but sympathy and respect for most flight attendants these days, because we've seen how some passengers can behave. Once they slip into their seats, they regress into infancy, practically forcing flight attendants into the roles of mother, father, teacher, etc. Of course, this is probably a mutually-reinforcing situation, but until there's a wholesale reinvention of the airline industry, let's all just try to be nice to each other. And if you usually get cold on flights, remember to pack a sweater in your carry-on, because the blankets are no more.

[Photo: Metropolis Tokyo]

Related Stories:
· Flying the Unfriendly Skies [The New York Times]
· Airline Coverage [Jaunted]