When put “in charge” of a few hundred passengers, flight attendants wind up getting a lot of questions. And because their “audience” is different from flight to flight, they tend to get the same questions over and over. I’ve been told some popular ones are:
- Do you get to take a break during flights? Do you eat the same things we do?
- After I’ve used the lavatory, where does it go?
- Do flight attendants often wind up dating pilots?
- Is it safe to drink airplane coffee? (we’ve gone over that one)
- How much do you get paid? (OMG, really?!?!)
- Have you ever seen passengers try to join the Mile High Club? (hell, besides all the celebrities who’ve said they’ve join it, there’s a WHOLE AIRLINE that’s specifically for people who want to join the Mile High Club!)
As long as they’re not inappropriate questions, flight attendants will answer most questions relatively truthfully. But there’s apparently one question where that’s not typically the case.
Where/what are we flying over?
Here’s a little secret – most flight attendants have no idea what or where a plane flying over at any given moment. After all, when you’re 35,000 feet in the air and you haven’t been watching a map or talking to air traffic control, most of the time it’s pretty impossible to tell. That’s especially so when you’re looking through a tiny window that’s 5 feet away because there are 3 people between you and it. If it’s a large swath of something recognizable, like maybe the Grand Canyon, they might know. But those small, medium and large-sized cities and towns you’re going over? No idea.
But passengers ask. Often. And some flight attendants might not feel comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” So what do a lot of flight attendants do? They lie. They pick the name of a town.
Oh that? That’s Clarkesville.
It’s not a big lie. It’s a little white lie where you’re never going to know the difference anyway. You know, sort of like when you’re trying to get a toddler to use their inside voice.
“Shhhh! The baby bunnies are trying to go to sleep!”
So now you know. If you ask a flight attendant where you’re flying over at the moment, they’ll most often either be truthful and say they don’t know…or they’ll lie and just make something up. 😉
Feature Image: Delta News Hub (Chris Rank/Rank Studios) / flickr / cc by-2.0
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1 comment
I think passengers should know better by using their common sense: “since you (the passenger) and the flight attendants are sharing the cabin throughout the whole flight, didn’t it make sense that both of you don’t know where the aircraft is flying over, unless you or the flight attendant gets access to the cockpit where you both can see the navigation display or at least ask the pilots where the aircraft is flying over at the moment?”
Please…passengers…use the common sense that you supposedly have if you truly are educated/literacy-enabled.