Are Late Crew Members Delaying My Flight?
Sarah Steegar December 08, 2015
Women carries their luggage at the airport terminal
Booing and a few anonymous shouts of “Assholes!” — that’s what my crew and I got when we approached our flight to Zurich. We’d been sitting around at the airport for six hours, unpaid, waiting to be told to go to the gate.
Everything had canceled that day. Everything. Except my Zurich flight. The winds at JFK were ferocious and had been filling up the flight boards with red all day. But when my crew finally got instructed to go to the plane, all the passengers seemed to blame us for the delay. In the eyes of our passengers, all of that became our fault. At least, I presume that’s why they were calling us foul names!
That’s often how it goes. So many things can go wrong, but all passengers see is, “Why are we waiting for a flight attendant? Why do they get to be late?” Cruise the complaints on any airline’s Facebook or Twitter page and you’ll find many variations on this particular rant. I see why, of course. It’s like we’re the last piece on the chessboard to be moved into place (when the strategy already happened in the rest of the game). All eyes fall on us, even if we’re just pawns. So I know it looks bad, but 99 of 100 times, this is why your crews are “late”:
Their inbound flight.
Your flight is probably just one in a sequence of flights. We can’t work a flight from Chicago to Orlando until we get to Chicago from New York – and then we can’t just run over to your gate.
We can’t get off the first plane until every passenger is off. You know that one family who decided not to even try and get their stuff together until everyone else was off the airplane? Yeah, we’re waiting for them. Or the wheelchairs, which we all know can seem to take forever to arrive. We also might also have come from somewhere requiring us to do the customs and immigration dance (and thus, potentially security) before getting to you, too.
Of course, just like you, our connecting gate is usually on the other side of the whole dang airport. At least, it feels that way.
They’re a reserve.
Most often, reserve flight attendants technically have two hours to get from home to report, maybe three if we cover multiple airports. In reality, call out times are often much shorter (even when the sick call was known in advance by scheduling) – and the company still won’t pay for a taxi to get us there more quickly.
The notice given can even overlap with our minimum rest time. Getting a last-minute reserve assignment is like being served legal papers. Nothing stops them from trying to contact you, even if you’re off duty. If they get you, you’re on the hook! (I’ve blindly answered those calls in a sleepy stupor — the hard part is not cursing so loud you wake your crashpad mates.) The only guarantee is that takeoff is 10-12 hours (plus 15 minutes allotted for deplaning) from the last time you parked at a gate.
“OK, but what about when…”
They’re coming from the hotel.
Usually hotel transport from the hotel is timely, but things happen. Perhaps it doesn’t show up on time – or at all! Sometimes there’s unusual traffic. Crews also get reassigned from layovers. Scheduling may just call the hotel and wake you up because something has changed. Everything’s in a scramble then.
They’ve clearly stopped for food.
Time between flights is often something like an hour and change, and that includes the time used to board your flight. Even on a 14-hour duty day, there are no flight attendant meals provided (at my airline anyway). You can see where the crunch is, right?
Last year, my company finally saw this problem (yay!) and tried to resolve it by … sending us an email requesting we don’t stop to get ourselves food between flights (boo!). To my knowledge, that is all that has been done to ameliorate the problem.
They don’t seem to be rushing.
Actually, this is your surest indicator that being “late” is out of the crew member’s control. A frantically rushing flight attendant is either so new they fear they’ll be blamed (even if it’s out of their control), or one who has actually screwed up and has something to worry about!
We’re not faultless, but we’re also not imbued with the power people imagine we have. If the fault is ours, flights usually have no problem leaving without us (via an airport standby reserve, or by going understaffed). No crew member can afford to be casual about when they get to work. I know you’re frustrated, and I know it looks bad when we saunter up “late,” but that saunter is exactly how you know it isn’t the crew who are off schedule.
[Photo: Getty]
Self-loading freight isn't always selfish and self-absorbed. I was on a 6a DL TPA-ATL last year where one of the FAs was a no-show. Most of us up in F had picked up on the crew's uneasiness about the situation and we were quite concerned as well. The held the flight for awhile to see if she'd show, but eventually they grabbed an FA from a later flight and continued the flight. When we arrived in ATL, several pax asked if the missing FA was found. If you think that's bad...imagine a hockey game starting >1 hr late because the referee & linesmen were late...and the venue let everyone know that was the reason for the delay. I don't think Obama at an NRA meeting would have gotten as rowdy of a response.
While flight attendants should provide good service, I don't think it is quite right to say they are in the service sector. A flight attendant is actually their to ensure your safety, not to serve you drinks. Yes, serving drinks is something they do but it is not their primary function.
"We’d been sitting around at the airport for six hours, unpaid, waiting to be told to go to the gate." Guess what? So had the PAX wanting/waiting to travel to ZRH... This said, any one wearing a uniform (for any airline) is representing the company and if no proper communication is given well, what do you expect? For some reason there seem to be more and more posts coming up on how "horrible" and "difficult" it is to serve coffee and pre-packed meals at 30'000 feet in addition to all the verbal abuse (which of course is not acceptable) flight crews take these days. But again, you are employed in the service sector so if you cannot take it, move on and find something else. Quote of the day: "...and the company still won’t pay for a taxi to get us there more quickly."