Nov 19 - Boston Base Orientation

Coming into Boston

We had base orientation today, in Boston.  I came on Monday with another girl from Orlando.  We’re staying in a hotel just outside the city.  At night, Jennifer, Terese and I went to a few stores and then ate at Pizzeria Uno.  It wasn’t quite the “Boston experience”, but it felt nice to have a place to sleep for the night and people to share the time with.  On Tuesday, we went downstairs for the free breakfast at the hotel.  I’ll never underestimate the value of the ‘free breakfast’ again – not only do you try to fill up enough to last you until lunch, but it’s also a good time to scope out items that you can store in your bag to keep as extra snacks.  Unfortunately, there were no ‘packable’ items this morning, but the breakfast was pretty good.

 We spent the day in a computer lab in the Boston airport, meeting people, hearing about the attendance policy, learning what being on Reserve will mean, taking a tour of the airport… basically, it was our introduction to the base.

 What does reserve mean?  It’s like being ‘on call’ for a doctor.  New flight attendants are all ‘on reserve’ and can be required to either sit in the airport all day or be on home reserve.  For either types, you are basically waiting by the phone all day to see if you’re needed on a flight.  When would you be needed?  If someone who was scheduled on a flight gets sick or doesn’t show up for some reason or another.  Flights have to get out one way or another and the FAA requires a minimum number of flight attendants on each airplane (that goes back to the safety requirements)… so there are people like me, sitting on reserve at all times. 

We’re able to put in requests as to which days we would like to sit reserve and which days we’d like to have off each month, but they really didn’t cover how to do it in detail.  There are two ways to put in requests – before the schedule is released, we can request days on/off and then after it’s been released we can try to switch days.  My schedule for Nov and Dec isn’t that great.  I have 3 days on then 1 day off, then 3 days on and 2 days off… although they did it so I have a total of 12 days off for the month.  If I want to make more money, I can pick up trips on my days off.

After orientation, Nicole, Katie, Nichole and I went out for drinks and dinner at Local 149.  Cute place.  I'm glad to have so many other people going through this with me.  The whole process (training, moving, scheduling, etc.) is pretty overwhelming.