A Candid Flight Attendant Tells It Like It is

by Stephanie DiCarlo

If you’re looking for a quick, funny, and entertaining read, look no further than ‘Diary of a Pissed-Off Flight Attendant‘ by Sydney Pearl. Pearl, if that is her real name, (I have to use pseudonyms to protect the privacy of a few individuals and to cover my own ass) tells her experience of how she became a flight attendant, what exactly she thinks of the job, and her frustrations she has had dealing with people in the air.

This book dispels the idea that flight attending is a glamorous “traveler’s dream” with a hilarious spin.
This quick and easy read is sure to help you pass the time on your own flight. Passion, wit, and attitude fills the pages of this book, and it may have you thinking twice before you ask your flight attendant, “Are we there yet?”


An Excerpt from Diary of a Pissed-Off Flight Attendant
We are well aware that sometimes traveling can be stressful. On our personal days off, we travel as regular passengers too, and we know that any number of things can cause a disruption. However, please keep in mind that there are TV monitors all over the terminals showing the gate and departure time of your flight, giving you no reason to harass every airline employee you encounter to ask about your flight.

The TV monitors also display whether your flight is on time or delayed. With the invention of smart phones there are also quite a few apps you can download that will also give you this information. Did you know that you can type in your flight information on the Flight Tracker app and it will give you the time you are scheduled to land? Yes? Then why do you keep asking me all of your stupid questions?

What time do we land?

Didn’t you set up some type of transportation at your destination? Whether you are picking up a car, getting picked up from the airport, or you have a connecting flight, you should know what time you are scheduled to land!

Don’t you have a watch? What about checking your phone’s clock?

On a recent flight, I was not in the best of moods and it was for the best that I had as little contact with passengers as possible. Of course, that’s when someone had to interrupt me with this innocuous question:

“What time do we land?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

The passenger looked at me as if I was an idiot.

I looked at him the same way, then smiled my most fake smile and walked away.

Let me explain something to you. We make announcements t the beginning of the light telling you exactly how long the flight is so you can calculate the flight time. Our pilots also make announcements telling you exactly how long the flight will be. You were busy talking on your cell phone? Oh well. Sounds like a personal problem to me.

A Trip Sheet

Sometimes flight attendants genuinely do not know the time we are scheduled to land becase we have so many flights that we work during the day and our only concern is what time we are going to reach our final destination. We do have what is called a trip sheet. A trip sheet provides us with our entire itinerary for each trip.

We know what cities we are going to, what time we take off and land in each city, and how much time we have on the ground between each of our flights. Although I usually keep my trip sheet in my pocket, if you caught me in a bad mood, and I don’t feel like pulling it out for you, you’re out of luck. So there.

What are we flying over?

Our extensive and intensive training deals with emergencies and procedures onboard the aircraft and we do not concern ourselves with geological areas we fly over. We are usually too busy running back and fourth taking care of you and the few moments we have to ourselves are not spent caring about what we are flying over. We are about one thing: getting to our final destination of the day.

When I’m in the middle of the aircraft passing out drinks, unable to see anything but the whiteness of clouds, and you are sitting by the window looking down at whatever you are looking at, and you ask me, “What are we flying over?”, I will probably respond with, “I don’t know. Let me pull my Rand McNally out of my pocket and check.” If I am in a really snarky mood and you ask me what we are flying over, I might say, “The sky.”

The other day, we were flying from California to Kansas City and, as I was passing out drinks, I noticed a passenger who was reading our inflight magazine’s article about Mount Rushmore. Every time I walked by him, he’d ask me innocuous questions until I started to get frustrated with the constant questions.

“Miss, what are we flying over?” he asked.

I looked him straight in the face and said, “Mount Rushmore.”

I am directionally and geographically challenged, but I am not clueless. I give passengers these goofy responses o demonstrate just how much I don’t care about what we’re flying over. And since I have proven to you just how dumb I am, maybe you will stop asking me questions.

Are we there yet?”

I want to meet the people who created the show, Are We There Yet? (And this tired and ridiculous question) and smack them. When someone asks me this stupid-ass question, my responses depend on what kind of mood I’m in. I usually reply, “Does it look like it?” or, “I don’t know, are we?” or, “What do you think?”

I really don’t like working in the summer or during the holidays, because we usually encounter less seasoned travelers and they just do not have a clue about how what to say and what not to say to the flight crew. I think in between their yearly trips, these people sit around thinking of lines they think we’ll find funny. Little do they know, we have heard almost every line a million times and and we don’t’ find them funny anymore.

Last month, a family of five boarded my flight. I could tell from the goofy smile on the dad’s face that he was dying for some attention from me. He told me that it was his daughter, Hailey’s, birthday and the had the nerve to ask if we could sing her a song. I told him that it was too early in the morning and reminded him that we needed to be considerate of the other passengers.

I wished Hailey a happy birthday and then turned my attention elsewhere. About thirty minutes into our six-hour flight, goofy dad needed a pillow and blanket. I explained that we did not have pillows and blankets onboard. Since we discontinued those disgusting things years ago I wondered how long it’d been since he’d flown. I had a feeling he was going to be a constant pain in my as so I tried my best to avoid him.
Later in the flight, I was sitting in my galley and saw him go into the lavatory.

When he came out, he paused. “Are we there yet?” He stood there with a silly smile on his face.

I just looked at him and said, “We will be, in about four more hours.”

What I really wanted to say is this: “Look here, idiot, if we were there, you wouldn’t be asking ME this question because guess what? We’d be there and you’d be gone.”

Thanks jackass, this flight just got that much longer.

Sydney Pearl is a freelance writer and e-book author of Diary of A Pissed Off Flight Attendant. She became an avid reader at the age of five, to help raise money for her aunt to participate in the Special Olympics. Her love of books has continued, inspiring her to write her first book. Sydney is an active Flight Attendant for a well respected airline. She is in a beautiful relationship and lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Buy this book on Amazon Diary of a Pissed-Off Flight Attendant.