Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
FROM EXPERIENCING THE thrill of adventure to taking amazing holidays at little or no cost, there are a lot of unique perks to being a flight attendant.
But the job comes with its challenges as well.
Delays and flight cancellations, 4am wake-up calls and sporadic hours, weekends and holidays spent working, and long work commutes top the list for many.
Flight attendants are also privy to a wide array of human behaviours, some of which would challenge anyone’s people skills.
Here are some of the most bizarre working conditions flight attendants have been subjected to:
The BBC reports that in March 2015 a British Airways flight from London to Dubai was forced to turn around because of a “smelly poo”.
Abhishek Sachdev, who was on board the flight, told BBC:
The pilot made an announcement requesting senior cabin crew, and we knew something was a bit odd. About 10 minutes later he said ‘you may have noticed there’s a quite pungent smell coming from one of the toilets.’ He said it was liquid fecal excrement. Those are the words he used.
A BA spokesperson said the situation posed a health and safety problem because only half the air is recycled and cleaned on an airplane.
Passengers were put up in a hotel overnight since the next available flight was 15 hours later, BBC reports.
In 2014, a passenger on a China Eastern Airlines plane who said he wanted to “get off the plane quicker” deployed the emergency slide after the aircraft landed at Sanya Phoenix International Airport.
The incident caused the aircraft to be delayed for two hours and reportedly cost about €14,500 in damages.
In response to the Quora question, “What are the weirdest things flight attendants have seen in their line of duty?” former flight attendant Heather Wilde says she’s seen her fair share of things many people would consider weird.
Among the strangest were people who made soup using the airline water. “Guys, the water lines haven’t ever been cleaned — ever,” she says.
More than 700 international cabin-crew members revealed an extensive list of items they found on flights after passengers disembarked to Skyscanner in 2013.
Animals accounted for several of the more unusual items on the list, including a falcon, dried fish, a frog, a tortoise, and a parrot.
A flight attendant with the pen-name ‘Betty’ writes in her online series Confessions of a Fed-Up Flight Attendant that the strangest things people have asked her for on a plane are actually fairly ordinary items.
What’s surprising is what some of these items would be used for.
Items requested include tweezers for pulling thorns out of a passenger’s butt; a pen to clean ears with; a screwdriver “to take the seat apart”; and a cup, lid, straw, and knife “to make a catheter”.
From streaking down the aisle totally nude to falling like an axed tree, when passengers consume an unfortunate mix of Ambien, which people take to sleep on planes, and airplane cocktails, it make even the most normal people do very bizarre things, ‘Betty’ says.
“These folks are sleeping, which means they think they are at home and safe in their beds. When they are home and safe in their beds they think it is perfectly acceptable to take off all of their clothes,” she explains.
Alas, this is not acceptable behaviour on a long-haul international flight.
‘Betty’ writes that passengers tend to get more inebriated on flights to Las Vegas. In his drunken state, one passenger passed out while he was in the restroom, fell backward, and ended up on the galley floor with his fly still down and his privates exposed.
After much debate between the attendants on the flight about what to do, “they finally decided to get the long metal tongs that we use to serve bread in first class to move the exposed body part back into his pants! He didn’t feel a thing,” Betty writes.
“I know more than one fellow flight attendant who has had the uncomfortable situation of having to tell a woman that she can’t breastfeed her … cat! You read that right: Breastfeeding. A. Cat. And this isn’t an isolated incident,” ‘Betty’ writes.
She says the cat-feeders’ response is always the same:
I’m just feeding my ‘baby’.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I think there will be a lot more Bulls coming out following this story.
Simpson scene:- Marge can i have a pet duck ? No Homer , you have Benji the bull ! . well can he have a duck?
He’s had to emigrate to live a life true to himself. Sounds like a well-trodden Irish path.
He doesn’t get to be himself- he won’t be a gay bull anymore he’ll be a bullock -
The Iona Institute are hopefully pissed off over this.. The bull raised cash faster than they did. :-)
Please stop calling it an “Institute”: it’s a lobby group that writes conservative opinion pieces which it refers to as “papers”.
UK law would not permit an organisation like this to refer to itself as an “Institute” and nor should secular Ireland.
The only learned thing about his conservative lobby group is the name “Iona”, which it has re-appropriated from the Abbey set up in Scotland by St Columba.
Rank over!
@winding. Utterly and completely agree with you.
But that’s the name they legally got, so that’s what the homophobic sods have to be called.
However, from now on, I’ll phrase them this way… Iona ‘Institute’.
Apols and lesson learned.
@David: Thanks!
I would suggest that if the Iona ‘Institute’ need money that badly, then they should apply for funding like real centres of learning do – from the Higher Education Authority.
I suspect that’d quickly dispel their confusion about the difference between their lobby group and the many bona fide academic institutions whose reputations they bring into disrepute by using ‘Institute’ in their title.
Now can these same people put their hands in their pockets and give money to child line also. Iv nothing against a gay bull but some people need to get their priorities right
Three questions: Why are humans more important than cattle? Why do you care what people donate their own money to? Do you regularly donate to child line?
Yes, I believe children that may need to ring child line are more important than this bull, I do give to charity by the way, and no I don’t care what other people do with their money. But are you honestly saying that saving this bull is worth more than children living in fear having a number to ring when they need it?
I believe animals are as important as humans. That’s what animal rights is about. So these people who wanted to donate, it’s their choice and their right to have those beliefs.
I believe it’s equally important to save a bull from fear/harm as to save a human from fear/harm.
Good luck with the mooove Benjy
I keep waiting for this to be confirmed as a wind up but it seems like its genuine. Sad reflection on society when something as trivial can not only garner publicity but actually raise money too. I look forward to the gay lobby getting behind (no pun intended) more noble causes.
I think it’s a sad reflection on society that people see animals’ lives as trivial. And this story is a good reflection on society.
So why aren’t you and the gay lobby out there campaigning to save straight bulls? How long have you been hetero phobic?
I am trying to save straight animals, haha. Most of the animals I try to save are straight or if they’re gay then I don’t know it…Most of the animals that ARAN tries to save are probably straight.
Fcuk sake, the bull isn’t fir for purpose, he should be made into burgers!
What because an animal isnt fit for purpose in industry eyes that he deserves to be slaughtered.
so any animal not fit for purpose deserves death? Are u serious? This is why animals rights are always stampled on . Human race is turning into something vile.
Would u say the same about a human not been fit for purpose?
It’s strange that a bull got saved only because it raped other bulls.
I mean, no other bulls were a fan of Benji’s prodding, I’m sure.
He should be hanging up in a factory!!
Where does AI man get his stock, couldn’t benjin have been a donor.
If benjy was that good a bull he would have(a) lived out his life at an AI station (with other bulls )
And (b) he wouldn’t have been bought for 5 grand or so -
He’s a hornless bull
What a load of bo#lo#ks.
Good bye my friend
Must have been some closet.
I wouldn’t mind but he’s an absolutely dreadful looking bull. If he was straight he’d easily be bought for less than 2000, total discrimination against heterosexual Bulls.
A very moving story. As I get older, I’m moving towards a veggie diet. I know I’m very sentimental over
Animals. I no longer eat beef or lamb. Animals do know when they get near the slaughter house. It’s terrible,
They are living beings.
That bull looks fairly feminine
Good im glad he was saved. Jus cause he doesn serve industry expectations.
Hate what this world has become oh no there no use slaughter them as if a life means nothing.
Shameful and humans should be ashamed of themselves to allow other animals lifes be so disposable to them.
Sometimes its evident humans are the worst thing to happen this world. Destroying every th in and anything
What a relief for the straight bulls of Ireland.
have your say