Cabin crew- AMA

[CabincrewAMA]

It’s probably been done before but oh well!

if anyone has any questions about the job itself, planes or flights in general feel free to ask away!

I was cabin crew for a while for an airline and mainly did short haul, and left around the time of covid starting.

If anyone has any questions, im here to try and help!

Do you get specific training on helping people with fear of flying, and if so, what is it?

Have you ever been scared your plane was crashing?

What's the worst turbulence you've experienced?

Were you on commission for sales? Do you think that was right or fair for staff?

Whats the hardest thing about doing that job?

what do you think would make your life easier doing that job?

Would you really leave a dead person in a seat for 8 hours?

I would say fear of flying kind of falls between 2 categories in training- first aid and customer service.

we are fully trained on first aid and how to deal with situations which could be brought on by stress or a fear of flying, like hyperventilating and fainting, having a panic attack or asthma attack from panicking. Cabin crew are fully trained and can deal with medical situations like this

and we are trained on the customer service side of it- like how to recognise and help passengers who may be stressed or frightened. It’s never an excuse for them to be rude, but it’s an explanation for their behaviour as it can present as anger or frustration- if they are scared and have convinced themselves they can do it, then something small happens like the flight being delayed by 10 minutes it can be the straw that breaks the camels back and really upset them. Obviously not all passengers are rude when scared but it sometimes does present like that.

a lot of the time passengers will get upset when frightened, we would just usually talk through things and reassure them, but if they are likely to completely freak out and panic once departed then it’s sometimes best for them to miss the flight. We are trained to recognise when this is the case and obviously we don’t want people to miss their flights just for being frightened, so we go through training about when passengers fears are likely to make them unwell or cause problems during the flight and ultimately it’s the pilot’s decision whether they fly or not. Most of the time people just need a bit of a handhold, a hug and some reassurance that everything is fine :)

Sorry it’s a really long answer, hope that helps!

No I honestly never thought about it. I would have been much more likely to be killed in a car accident en route to the airport than in a plane crash, and aviation is incredibly safe and plane crashes are extremely extremely rare thankfully!

Turbulence was common but bad turbulence was more unusual- we had some bad turbulence once (returning from Greece, IIRC), it was actually unexpected and I was collecting rubbish and I remember feeling like both feet had come off the floor. The rest of the flight was smooth and I was absolutely fine, but had some interesting bruises afterwards!

You've gone a bit quiet OP.

Do you understand the premise of AMA?

What if you don’t want to wear make up? Is it compulsory?

Is it as badly paid as people think?