Some people love traveling and some hate it, but one thing’s for sure: no one wants to be on a flight with a rude flight attendant. From boarding to dealing with baggage to getting a bite to eat, a flight attendant is your number one point person. Folks recall the time they heard a flight attendant say something problematic on their flight. This content has been edited for clarity.
1. Max Capacity
“I was flying standby with my husband and eight-month-old son. Of course when flying standby, you are naturally the last ones to board the plane. We found our seats, put our things away and right as I was about to sit down, a flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Ma’am, the flight is at its weight capacity so we are instructed to have the last person who boarded the plane to deplane so that we may take off.’
I thought she was joking at first and gave her a puzzled look as I was holding my infant son.
I responded and said, ‘Wait, you are serious?’
This then caught the attention of many other passengers and she told me again that I needed to get off the plane. I didn’t know what else to do but hand my son to my husband and follow the flight attendant off the plane. Meanwhile, a few other passengers stood up and yelled at the flight attendant about how ridiculous of a request that was.
One passenger looked me straight in the eye and said to take their seat. Then they looked at the flight attendant and said, ‘This girl weighs no more than 100 pounds, if we are at capacity then take someone’s bag off!’
The flight attendant backed off, I took my seat, and the plane took off just fine.”
2. “Just Clouds”
“I was on a British Airways flight seated in a row that was an emergency exit which was on the wing and slightly behind the port engine. After about ten minutes of cruising altitude, I looked out the exit window and noticed there was a slight white trail coming from the engine.
In order not to frighten other passengers, I went to the rear galley and said there was a suspicious leak coming from the port engine and that I think she should have a look at it. The flight attendant said, ‘Oh, it’s just clouds we are passing through,’ which I knew to be a lie as there weren’t any in sight.
I repeated the fact and she said if I didn’t go back to my seat and was quiet, I would be restrained by the onboard crew and arrested. Fed up, I walked through the curtained off area at the front to first class and spoke to the chief flight attendant. I explained the situation and what had happened with the rear flight attendant and she went white, then red with anger.
She went into the cockpit to speak to the Captain who came with me to my seat to look at it. He groaned, thanked me, and went back to get a priority landing at Heathrow. As I was leaving, I was asked my name and number by the chief flight attendant and a few weeks later, a letter arrived stating the dismissive flight attendant had been sent for retraining and that I was to be awarded 2000 points and a free upgrade for my next flight.”
3. Make The Best Of It
“I’m a big guy and airline seats are getting smaller in an effort to squeeze every last drop of revenue from every flight. On a flight on a smaller jet sometime in the last year, I was sitting in the aisle seat with another big guy in the middle seat. Our shoulders were overlapping and the poor soul on the window seat was sitting diagonally.
We were just making the best of a crappy situation knowing it would all be over in about two hours. I was trying to give the guy next to me a little room to adjust, so I was leaning a few inches into the aisleway. As the flight attendant came by, she bumped into my shoulder fairly hard.
Instead of apologizing, or ignoring it, she turned and told me, clearly annoyed, ‘You need to move completely out of the aisle.’
I looked at her deadpan and gestured to the apparent situation with my seatmate as I said, ‘Where would you have me go?’
She said, ‘I don’t care, just figure it out,’ and walked off.
There was no offer to re-seat any of us or help in figuring out a better seating arrangement. She was clearly having a bad day. So I did what I could, which was nothing. She bumped me a couple more times during the flight including once with the beverage cart but said nothing again.
As a big guy who flies a lot, I have no problem getting bumped into. It happens all the time. It just seemed like if it was a serious safety issue, she could have found two small people sitting together and re-seated all of us or just accepted what was a crappy deal for everyone.
Related, I just saw that United is planning to reverse this trend in regional jets by reducing the number of seats on the plane by 20, giving everyone a little extra room to breathe. Hopefully the other airlines follow suit. I read that this will mean a drop in revenue of 5–10% per flight. I’ll gladly pay that much more in fare price, if any of the airlines are listening.”
4. Got Milk?
“We were flying domestic on United almost a decade ago. I was with my husband and our then eight-month-old daughter. The connecting flight had been delayed and we spent a few extra hours at the Denver airport.
As we boarded our final leg, we realized we were completely out of our daughter’s formula. We had used it up during the long delay. There was not enough time to run back and find a store in the terminal, so we got on the plane hoping our daughter would remain asleep throughout the fight.
Our daughter started waking up and fussing as the drink service was just beginning. The flight attendant was a woman whose face was covered by Texas-styled makeup, circa 1983. The blonde hair which had been teased and poofed up was partially deflated. She tersely asked the passengers ahead of us, ‘What ya want? What ya want? What ya want?’
When it was our turn, we asked if we could have some milk for the baby. She scoffed loud enough for all to hear, then she said, ‘All our milk is reserved for passengers who may want to enjoy it with their coffee.’
Seeing she wouldn’t easily give us a glass of milk, I told her I wanted a cup of coffee with milk, but I told her to hold the actual coffee. She begrudgingly poured a tiny amount of milk into a cup. The amount was ridiculously small. One of the passengers across the aisle saw what was going on and uttered, ‘You can’t be serious.’
By then other passengers started to chime in. A few accused us of being unprepared and negligent parents. I told my husband to stop explaining to them that our supply had run out due to the unforeseen delay. These people didn’t care, though some tried making the flight attendant feel bad for her lack of kindness.
The flight attendant herself was unfazed. She ignored everyone and continued on with her drink service. We didn’t get more milk from her. We soothed our daughter back to sleep for the rest of the flight. When we got off the plane, I looked at my husband. We each knew what the other was thinking.”
5. Triplets
“I was flying Air Canada back from Beijing to Vancouver in 2008. The flight had an excess of two dozen children under the age of three. Many were families bringing home their newly adopted bundle of love. There was one family who had triplets, the babies about eight months old.
The triplets were clearly born into that family and the mom and dad had another adult with them so each adult had one baby. The person with them had the most independent baby many rows away, and the other two babies cried constantly unless the mom was holding them. The parents weren’t allowed to sit together because there was only one baby allowed per row, so the dad was across the aisle.
The babies cried for a good 45 minutes so the dad stood in the aisle bouncing the baby up and down. Turbulence started and the flight attendant demanded the dad sit down. Finally, both babies were asleep together on the seat (middle row), and mom was sitting on the floor with her head on the seat, asleep in exhaustion.
At some point, two flight attendants were giving the parents a hard time for flying with three babies.
They were saying things like ‘You shouldn’t have been allowed to book all on the same flight,’ and ‘I don’t know how you were allowed to all book on the same flight.’
The poor parents had followed all the rules with each baby having an adult companion, yet the flight attendants wouldn’t let up. This family had started their flight somewhere else in China and were flying through to Montreal. Clearly they were not newly immigrating to Canada (probably went home to visit family). They were treated with disrespect by the flight attendants. I regret not saying anything.”
