January 1st

Report time this morning was 5:30am, ugh.

Our first leg was to Boston, so Justin rode on our flight back to Boston.  Why I didn't have him fly direct from Boston to Orlando, I can't remember.  Instead, I sent him on to JFK from there.

It was a lot of fun having him on the plane!  I would stop by and chit chat with him and bring him extra snacks.  For the first several days this month, my airline is giving free movies... so Justin was like a happy little kid - snacks, movie, drinks and me to wait on his every push of the call button.  haha.

Our flight was almost empty and most of the people were hung over and sleeping.  One funny thing that did happen:

When we let the pilots out of the cockpit for a bathroom break, we have to set up a security perimeter before they open the cockpit door.  We also wait until after we serve the customers before we call to check and see if the pilots need a break.  Well, apparently the drinks last night were too much for the guys because we get a call immediately after we hit 10,000 feet "we need to come out.  we've gotta come out now".  Before we can set up security, one of the pilots Busts out of the cockpit door and runs into the bathroom.  The F2 and I just look at each other and laugh, while she steps up into the cockpit.  Hahaha that Never happens!  He almost crapped himself lol Some people can't drink like they used to :)

Saying goodbye to Justin was really tough, but we had 3 more legs to do that day.  Our pilots were sad to see him go too.  They had us take this picture:

And the bad part of the commute for Justin... There's a winter storm hitting on January 2, so once Justin got to JFK, he couldn't get on a flight back to Orlando.  He sat in the JFK airport All day, being bumped from one flight to the next, until he Finally made it home.  He was very fortunate to make it at all, but it ended up being a very long day for him.  Such is the life of using flight benefits.

December 31, 2013 - New Years Eve!

I’ve been hanging on edge to see what I’m doing for New Years because Justin is planning to come up and meet me to spend the new year together.  The fact that I’ve been getting all of these day turns is killing me.  New Years is tomorrow and I still have no idea what I’m doing, ugh.  

Well, when we got back from Cancun at 6:30 pm, I was surprised to find out my trip was assigned to me! That Never happens!  And it’s an amazing trip.  One flight to Chicago, 20 hour layover and then 3 legs on January 1^st.  I called Justin and we started working on his trip to Chicago.  He wasn’t going to make it to the airport in time for the last flight from Orlando to Boston, so we booked him on a flight to JFK and then in the morning, he’d fly to Chicago.  The problem is that we only have 4 flights a day to Chicago – 2 from Boston and 2 from JFK.  I booked him a hotel near the JFK airport, however, I didn’t check to make sure how late the shuttle from the airport runs.  They stop at 11pm and his flight arrived at 12:30am.  Poor thing had to take a taxi to the hotel for $60 and then was only able to sleep there for about 3-4 hours.  Geez, what a waste of $120 on the hotel.

In the morning, I walked into the crew lounge to discover I was working with someone I don’t like flying with. Ugh, I’ve only been here 2 months, how am I repeat flying with people?!?  We do our one trip to Chicago and I’m already about to hurt this lady.  She keeps coming up into my galley and moving things – “oh you’re side of the plane is hot” she turns down my air (but adjusts it Too much).  “oh you’re side of the plane is freezing” and she starts to adjust the air again when I cut her off and say “don’t touch anything in my galley!” (which is totally not like me).  

We made it to Chicago 20 minutes early and then were stuck on the runway for 45 minutes!  Eventually, I got off and was able to see Justin.  It was great to have him here.

We took at 30 minute cab ride to the hotel, which was gorgeous.  I wasn't expecting the weather to be so cold though!  It was 15 degrees when we landed!  Regretting that I didn't bring my snow shoes.  Justin and I changed into warmer clothes and set out to explore the city.  We walked around Chicago and kept having to duck into stores to keep from freezing to death.  We went to see the Bean, 

Can you find us???? Cuz I can't!  lol

stopped at Intelligentsia for coffee and snacks.  I bought Justin a flight of coffee.  I don't think he was as excited about it as I was.  

and went to the John Hancock building for drinks with a gorgeous view of the city.  

We walked around the city, just being silly and taking pictures… of course any picture I take, he has to take on his super-duper camera too.  So we have a lot of duplicate photo’s.  

Justin has his own store!!

For dinner, we went to a pizza place to visit with my friend Derin, from high school.  It was so great catching up!  By the time we made it to dinner, my suede shoes were completely soaked through.  It was snowing so hard.  The F2 from my trip came to meet us for pizza and afterwards we went back to the hotel to listen to live music and drink with the FO and Captain.  The guys were great and really liked Justin.  We all had a great time being ridiculous. 

Justin and I were really excited that an Irish band was going to play to bring in the New Year… until they played Every Slow Irish song known to man!  So we went to bed before midnight.  Early report the next day, so probably a good thing! 

December 30 BOS: CUN

Got a call early this morning, Cancun turn.  It’s pretty good hours, but I really want to know where I’m going to be for New Year’s Eve so Justin can plan to meet me. 

I enjoy listening to customer stories and I meet some interesting people.  A guy today owns a multi-state jewelry shop in Rhode Island and has had it for 30 years.  He still loves what he’s doing.  I hope I find something to do like that.

When one of my roommates saw who the F1 was on my trip, he said “Oh no, be really careful.  She writes people up all the time.”  Everyone in the crew lounge knew her name too.  I wonder if she’s really that “bad” or if someone was not doing their job and she told on them for it.  A lot of flight attendants seem to cut corners or do things they shouldn’t.  Everyone is on their best behavior around this girl.  I wonder if it’s better to do things that way.  I think I’d only report someone if they were being unsafe or really rude.  Stinks about this job because if you tell on someone, the person knows and knows who told and what was reported.  So far, she’s been really sweet and I love her announcements.

December 29, 2013 JFK: TPA: BOS

I got downstairs at 5:10am this morning to be early for our 5:30 shuttle.  I was the first person in line waiting for the shuttle, but I waited for the rest of my crew before I headed to the bus.  Little did I know, the bus filled up and even though we made a ‘reservation’ for the 5:30am shuttle, there was no room for us!  I can’t believe that the hotel doesn’t make better effort to keep space available for people who signed up for it in advance.

By the time our F3 got downstairs, the hotel told us another shuttle would arrive in 5 minutes.  5 minutes turned into 20, we were late to the airport, and caused the flight to be delayed.  We rushed on, did our safety checks and began boarding asap.  We were able to close the airplane door 5 minutes after the scheduled time (which I thought was pretty darn good).

The first flight was down to Tampa.  Very uneventful, since most of the people slept the entire time.  It’s really hard to stay awake on these flights, I always just want to sleep.  I was tired and didn’t even try being silly during the safety demo.

Our second flight was a little more fun, but we were all still pretty tired and the turbulence was pretty rough.  I made friends with a couple at the front who were pretty fun.  They clapped during my safety demo and told me I did an amazing job.  Haha.  Silly.  I did my usual bit of giving customers a hard time. 

The Tampa AO told us a gross story though.  She said one time, a PR customer took a big poop in the middle of the aisle on the plane.  The customer then proceeded to “pass out” and fell onto the flight attendant, knocking him over into the poop!!  The other customers on the plane also failed to notice the poop and continued walking through it, tracking it all over the plane and eventually through the airport!!  GROSS!  I can’t imagine!

Anyways, by the end of the flight, the F1 and I were so delirious; we were doing voice impressions on the jump seat and laughing to ourselves hysterically.  He’s pretty darn good at Russian and Australian.  I tried talking him into doing the announcements with an accent, but he wouldn’t haha.  I love being silly.  J

December 25 - Merry Christmas!!!

I went down to breakfast at the hotel.  All the food at this hotel is very expensive, but I figured, if I’m spending Christmas alone, I’m at least going to splurge on breakfast.  It was totally not worth it.  Some hotels give free breakfast that’s exactly the same as this one, which cost me $17.  I went back to my room and enjoyed just laying around and relaxing all morning.

Later in the day, Scheduling called (bum bum bum…).  Instead of sending me back to Boston today, they assigned me to an LAX red eye turn from JFK.  I was a little nervous to be working with a JFK crew because I’ve heard such bad things about them, but it ended up being an amazing flight.  My crew was awesome.  They’re two guys who are friends and they work together a lot.  The one cooked gooey chocolate cookies for us and they both wore santa hats.  I wish I’d remembered to bring my hat!  Several passengers brought us gifts – mini cup cakes, starbucks gift cards and candy.  It was really sweet.

We got off in LAX for some Starbucks coffee and began boarding the plane immediately afterwards.  Our Captain on the flight back was really sweet.  He bought candy canes to hand out to all of the children on our flight.  As always, it was difficult to stay awake on the flight back.

One interesting thing I learned on this flight is that when we offer sandwiches and other fresh food, we can only service it for up to 4 hours on the flight.  We don’t have refrigerators or anything to keep the food cold, so they put dry ice in the carts with the food.  Once we land, all of the fresh food is thrown away.  However, the crew is not allowed to eat the food or give it away.  This seems incredibly wasteful to me and I was really disappointed about it.

All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a better crew and I really enjoyed working with both of them.  I stayed the night in JFK and then deadheaded back to Boston on the 26.

December 24 - Christmas Eve

The reserve schedule didn’t end up getting released until 11 pm last night.  I was put on 3am to 3pm home reserve and forgot that I have to wake up to check-in for my reserve duty.  I missed the phone calls from Scheduling and was given a “no show” on my record.  That’s a really big deal and would put me on automatic probation.  I emailed my supervisor immediately at 7am when I woke up.

Soon after, I received a call from scheduling about a trip assignment.

The only thing that could make up for me not getting the Orlando layover is getting another really good trip. And that’s exactly what happened.  They want me to deadhead (get paid to fly to a different location) to JFK and then fly our brand new A321 plane to Puerto Rico.  I was disappointed when I realized I would be flying back to JFK the same night (a red-eye turn), but my disappointment was short lived when I realized I would be flying with one of my fav roomies.  He’s friends with the other 2 girls who will be working with us and said they’re a lot of fun.  How awesome:  a good trip, fun crew and lots of paid time on the holiday!

We arrived at the JFK airport 2 hours before our scheduled departure, so the 4 of us went to grab dinner.  There’s a buffet type place in the JFK airport that I really like.  You can purchase all sorts of food, but my favorite is to fill up a salad bowl and then they charge based on the weight.

After dinner, we headed over to the gate, but the plane wasn’t there yet.  The gate agent was one of those people who has major issues with everything.  “I speak Spanish, but I refuse to do so because the company doesn’t pay me to speak Spanish.” And a few days after the flight, I get an email that the gate agent also tagged the “crew” as the reason for the flight being delayed leaving… um, the plane was late, I’m not sure how that was our fault.  Whatever.

The flight to San Juan was pretty uneventful.  The A321 was ok, but I was really thankful to be the #4.  I got to stand and sit in the very back.  The #2 and #3 are stuck sitting next to passengers and the #3 has to sit FACING a passenger in the row behind her.  The other problem was that the tv’s had not been installed on the plane yet, so a lot of customers were irritated about that.  The supervisors told us there would be games and magazines on board for people to use … games turned out to be foam boards for tick tack toe and the magazines were some free airplane magazine.  People were a little irritated.

I’m really into my book, the Divergent series, so I spent my extra time on the flight reading.

We arrived back in JFK very early on Christmas morning.  My crew and I talked about getting together for drinks in one of our rooms, but once we walked in and closed the doors… everyone fell asleep.  

December 23 - Back to Boston

Nicole and I got back to Boston and traveled downtown to see our friend, Juli, from training.  Juli is based in Long Beach, but she was on a layover here for 18 hours.  We walked around downtown a little and went to the Original Cheers.

Later in the day:

So its 10pm the day before Christmas and the reserve schedule has not been released yet for tomorrow.  It was supposed to be released at 3pm.  I'm not sure what's wrong with their system, but it's pretty terrible.

There was a flight with a layover in Orlando tomorrow and Palm Beach the following day.  I requested the trip on December 2 and as of this morning there were two positions still available on the flight.  Even though the airline is really hurting for people to cover flights and it's a 3 day trip (which I'm available for), they told me I can't have it and that I have to wait to see what I get tomorrow.  I can't freaking believe that!  I'm so pissed off at this stupid system! That doesn't make any sense.  So many people call out "sick" for the holidays and the ones who are actually working can't even pick up trips they want??? Just ridiculous. Maybe I'll be sick tomorrow.

December 22 - Orlando Layover

Well it's not quite Christmas, but it might as well be!  Layover in Orlando tonight!

I called my parents, Justin, and my grandparents to go to dinner.  Everyone came and again, I dragged Nicole to dinner with everyone.  We had such a great time laughing and being silly.

I really miss my family, especially right now.  But I'm thankful I'm able to travel down here to visit while working.

Right now we're landing in Newark and I have one more trip to go.  I'm hopeful I can get assigned to a trip with a layover in Orlando or west Palm for Christmas.  I put in "requests" for 3 different trips that would put me in Orlando on the 24, but we'll see what happens.

The next day we headed back to Boston.

Nicole's been adopted into the family.

Guy working at the hotel

Just plain being silly

Me and Justin.

One of my co workers said I look old in these photos.  Not sure how I feel about that :-/

December 21 - PBI Layover

One of the perks of this job is getting layovers in cities where I have friends and family.  When I got the 3:07am call from Scheduling, I wasn't particularly excited, especially because I never fell asleep that night. However, once I heard the trip had layover in both west Palm and Orlando, I was pretty excited.  The holidays without my family are really hard. It definitely doesn't feel like Christmas this year and I'm trying to forget it’s even here.

I got to the airport around 5.  The buses and trains in Boston don't start until 5:30, so I had to catch the Sunrise Shuttle for the first time.  The Sunrise Shuttle is a van for airport employees and runs from 430 till 530, I think. 

I get to the airport to find out that Nicole (from training) is the F1 on the trip!  It's my first trip with a friend!  And it's my first multi day trip on the E190.  Nothing eventful has happened during the flights really.  The early morning flights were almost empty (half full) and the later flights were completely full.  We left Orlando today at 5:30am and there were 47 out of 100 passengers.  Everyone slept for the most part and I only had 5 drink orders.  Our next flight had 100 of 100.

The trip itinerary was:

Day 1: BOS: Richmond: BOS: Palm Beach

Day 2: Palm Beach: White Plains, NY: Orlando

Day 3: Orlando: Newark: Boston

Not a bad schedule.  I text dad and Justin at 4am to tell them the news haha.  Orlando layover!!!

It's been a lot of young families on the planes, obviously traveling for the holidays.  They've all been nice and polite, for the most part.  On the flight to Orlando, I did have one guy yell at me.  The convo went something like this:

Me:  “Sir, can I get you a drink?”

Him:  “Yeah, a diet coke. And can I get some airflow on this planet?!? My air vent doesn't work and the sun is shining in on me, I'm so freaking hot! I paid $170 for this??”

(he has a newspaper stuffed in the ceiling to block the sun)

Me:  “Sir, you can close the window shade.”  (guy in front of him reaches back and closes the shade.  Guy snatches his newspaper down)

Him:  “This is freaking ridiculous!”

Sigh.

I keep walking and taking drink orders while other passengers give me that look like "what a jerk".  I thought about being rude to him, but instead I brought him extra ice with his drink to help cool him down, told him I turned down the air, and that if I could move him I would but the flight was 100% full so there wasn't much more I could do for him.  He was calmer after that, prob not happy but at least calmer.

On the layover in West Palm, Nicole and I ran into my crash pad roommate at the lobby bar.  Small world!  At 8, my cousins, Joe and Jill came to pick me up for dinner and I dragged Nicole along.  We had such a great time visiting with them and they really enjoyed showing Nicole around Sweet Tomatoes because she'd never been before.

December 20, 2013

So I didn’t get a California turn.  No, I got a 4 leg trip BOS:JFK:BOS:EWR:BOS (EWR is Newark, NJ).  Pretty much the only trips I’ve gotten so far are either New York area or Florida.  I’m really hoping to go somewhere else fun… like Las Vegas, Texas, California, etc…

The trips went well.  On the way to JFK, it got pretty bumpy.  I need to learn when to sit down or not, it’s hard to tell.  I was on the E190, so there are only 2 flight attendants.  My #1 was nice, but she didn’t want to talk or hang out much.  Which was ok with me because I started reading Divergent and I’m hooked.  I wanted to tell passengers, “yeah yeah, get it yourself, I’m reading”.

All the trips today were really short (45 mins or so), which makes serving drinks/snacks really difficult… gotta rush.

When we were delayed coming out of Boston to Newark, my #1 and First Officer got into a tiff.  .  The F/O wanted to give customers (who were stuck on the plane) whatever they wanted, without regard to our In-Flight rules. 

Customer asks the F1 “Can I plug my phone in somewhere?”

F1:  No I’m sorry

FO:  (butts in) Oh yeah, she can plug your phone in right there.  (We’re not allowed to plug customer phones in on the plane because they can be damaged)

Customer 2:  Can I get some coffee?

F1:  No, I’m sorry, but I can give you water.

FO:  (butts in) Of course she can give you coffee.  Give them whatever they need (directed to the F1).  (this is bad because if one customer gets coffee, everyone wants coffee and we have to collect all of it before we take off so it can delay our take off even more).

After this situation, the FO goes into the cockpit and proceeds to complain about the F1.  We can hear the pilots through the cockpit door. 

The rest of the trip the F1 was so upset about the whole situation and after our trip the FO says “wow, was that F1 just as bad in the back?  It must’ve been terrible working with her”. 

Eek, I stayed quiet.  I thought they were both nice ladies, it was just a funky situation.  The FO wanted to make sure we were giving great customer service, but the F1 was trying to follow the rules.  Was pretty awkward though.