For the sake of venting here is my AA FA story from last week. I was flying STL-ORD in F. Right after boarding, the pilot told the lead FA due to some problem at ORD we would have a wheels up time some 55 minutes after our scheduled departure.

I'm thinking to myself why can't we stay in the terminal? Of course hope springs eternal and I assume that we are boarding and pushing back because we will actually get off earlier than the expected delay. This hope almost becomes reality as we taxi right by the penalty box and head for the runway. Just short of the runway the pilot stops and shuts down the engines. Hope dashed. Pilot announces that there is a problem at ORD, he has no idea what and says so (kudos for honesty)and we will be waiting here for at least 55 minutes. Hope completely crushed. The pilot states that we are allowed to make phone calls and get out our laptops.

Now I admit, I wasn't having the best day, but about after 10 minutes of watching the FA read her magazine and listening to the grumblings of my seat mate and other passengers, I finally catch the eye of the FA reading and signal her for a drink. She comes over to me and asks what I want, I told her and naturally the reaction was two fold. She looked at me as I was her new worst enemy and the other passengers in F promptly announced their prefered libation.

We finally left an hour or so late.

I guess in my opinion the FA should have walked through the cabin afer the engines were shut down and the pilot had assured us it would be quite a while. It was clearly her intent to sit there for the entire time had no one said anything. I'm sure if I had not, based on the rumblings around me, someone else would have gotten to it soon enough.

Today my shining star of an FA is the one who announced to us in F that she owns nothing on the plane so if it is available for her to give to us it is ours! There is more of a back story to that comment but hopefully it conveys the right attitude.