Stuff You Should Know - How Flight Attendants Work

Episode Date: December 8, 2017

Flight attendants have come a long way. From having to put up with rampant sexism, to the current incarnation as your first line of defense in case of an incident, they are valued airline employees. Learn all about this cool job in today’s episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, with me as part of your cabin crew is Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Filling the whole thing out is our pilot, Jerry Rowland. Captain Jairz, as we'll call her from now on. If you'd like to return your seat, do its full, upright position. But. Along with your tray table. If you've lost your device or phone in the seat, don't touch it, just come get one of us. Did that happen to you?

It's a new thing. What? Tell me. No, it's like a new thing on Delta and like the safety instructions, they actually take a little time to say, if you've lost your tablet or phone in your seat, don't adjust it, come get a flight attendant. What do you mean lost in the seat?

What do they mean? Like if you have, if you're sitting there and you got the butt of fingers and you turn into Jerry Lewis all of a sudden, your phone slides down into the seat beside you, or in between the seat next to you. Okay. Your phone is in grave danger. If you adjust your seat back upright again.

Oh, like. They say get a flight attendant because they now have additional skills in their repertoire to get your tablet or phone out safe. So at some point, a memo went out to these airlines that said, we're breaking cell phones because people are like, well, maybe if I just throw my seat up, it'll pop out.

Sure, it'll shoot right out. Like I pressed rewind on life. Weird. Anyway, this is stuff you should know. The, I thought this was pretty interesting actually. And it gave me even more of an appreciation for flight attendants than I had already gained over my years.

Yeah. Because if you're one of those putses who's mean to flight attendants, you- Get off the plane. You're a jerk. Yep. Shouldn't be mean to people anyway. Like everybody's walking around carrying their own burden

that you're totally unaware of. And if you're mean to somebody, it usually is because you're not getting what you want right then. So if everybody can just calm down and be nice to each other, that's great. But be extra nice to the flight attendants. And if you don't agree with me now,

I guarantee you'll agree with us at the end of the podcast. And even in our own article here, there was a interview with a flight attendant. A couple of them. A couple of them. But one of them very, you know, one of these vets said, eh, you know, back in the day, everyone was all excited when they flew.

They were going someplace fun. Now everyone's crabby. Yeah, but she makes a really great point. Why? She says it's because this is all post 9-11. That the added layers of security that they've put onto getting from your car onto the plane. Increases stress so much that you're exhausted

by the time you get onto the plane. And if flying has become a chore, a task. Yeah, I'm gonna buy it. The seats have gotten way smaller. I do buy that. The legroom's gotten smaller. And yeah, I think that it's just kind of become more of like a let's get from point A to point B.

Yeah, I, taking your shoes off, taking your laptop out, it's about all the extra security. No big deal. That's what I say. Did I tell you I've gotten kind of on board your train about taking your shoes off on a flight? Oh, to not do it? Yeah.

Good. So every once in a while I'll just be like, to hell with that, I don't care. I'm taking my shoes off. I know my feet don't stink. Right. But I understand that there's people like you out there who are deeply offended by that kind of thing.

So I typically do leave them on unless my dogs are just yapping so loud, I can't ignore it. But it's pretty rare these days. I think my deal with that is you can't count on everyone's feet to not stink. Right. There's plenty of people like, I don't care. That their feet stink?

Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty rotten. I just want to be comfy. That's pretty rotten. But we live in something called society. There are rules. But getting back to the new regulations, which is pretty much laptop out, shoes off.

I mean, you still had to go through the line just like before, you know? Yeah, it seems, it feels different to me. Yeah. It does. Different as in more time consuming? Yeah. Much more stressful.

Like it's not an event like it was. It definitely used to be an event in a person's life to go on an airplane. Well, do you have a different feeling when you go on vacation compared to work travel? As far as the airport goes? Yeah, and how you feel about it. Zero.

Yeah. Same stress? Yes. A lot of it, to be fair, is in my head. Yeah. To me, pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you is missing your airplane. I don't even want to imagine what happens

when you miss your airplane. You mean like, it's not that bad? Sure. As a matter of fact, she's kind of entertained, like purposefully making us miss your airplane. Oh, your own version of cognitive behavioral therapy. Exposure therapy, right. But I don't want to miss it.

So I generate my own stress in a large part. But it does seem like much more of a process than it was before. Okay. How about you? You're fine with it? Yeah, I mean, it's no big deal. Just shoes and a laptop.

Yeah. Two bits. But it does seem like, and I read this travel and leisure article about flight attendants, where the author was saying, or I think she was quoting a flight attendant who was saying like, we've all kind of decided as a group that we're fine with just getting

on an airplane and getting to where we're going, and it doesn't have to be this luxury experience. Right. And as a result, the price of an airline ticket has come down dramatically compared to the golden age of flying. Oh, yeah. But then it has gone back up since it was pretty cheap.

Yeah. But relative to say average income, it's I think much less than it was in say like the 60s. Right. But in the 60s, they were cutting like cuts of meat on a cart in front of you. I'm not kidding. There was a carving station that they would move.

I'm not kidding. I've seen pictures of it. I believe it. I think it's funny that that's the definition of fancy as a carving station. It really is. I mean, it is. The guy had the hat and everything.

Yeah. Well, you and my extended family agree on that. But it's true. And all of us take our shoes off while we eat our car meat. But there used to be that. There were like piano lounges in first class lounge. Like there were, it was like, it was an event to do it. But the fact that it's gone is because we've all said,

you know, we want to be able to travel for less cost. Right. With fewer frills. Yeah, I just kind of want to get there. I'm with you there. Yeah. If that's what you think. Or I'm with the airline industry.

Yeah, I just put me on the plane and give me there. Maybe throw a whiskey down my throat. Sure. And that's about all. Thank you. Banana maybe. Yeah. But it's the morning.

But the people who are going to help you get there, banana and whiskey? Yeah, sure. OK. The people who are going to help you get there, they have, their job has changed over time. But they have not, because they are unsung heroes and have been from beginning to end.

That's right. The early days of plane travel, they hired young men to take care of the stewardship of the plane. Cabin boys. Yeah. Cabin boy. That Chris Elliott movie? Yeah.

I think that was a boat cabin, but still. Sure. Still a cabin boy. Yeah. And that was just sort of the thing. And then this woman came along, and you dug this up. It's really great. Her name was Ellen Church, the 1930s, in 1930, in fact.

And she was a nurse and a licensed pilot. So she had it going on. And she said, you know what? I have an idea, Boeing Air Transport, who would become United Airlines. Why don't you hire eight women to take care of you on your flight for three months and just see how that goes? And it went great.

And they said, I think we're on to something here. Yeah. She actually pitched the idea, because at first, the execs were like, no, that's a stupid idea. This is no place for women. Yeah. And she said, well, get this. How is a man going to say that he can't fly,

because he's afraid of flying, if he knows there's a woman up there flying around? And they're like, actually, that's pretty good psychology. So they took her up on it, and it became a thing from that moment on. But before her, I have to say, if we're talking gender non-specific flight attendants, yes.

A man had her beat by 18 years, a German man named Heinrich Kubis, who was the world's first flight attendant, and he worked as zeppelins, including the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg. Really? Yeah. Did he die on the Hindenburg? No, he left.

Oh, wow. Very few people died on the Hindenburg. I think they were mostly on the ground, remember? Yeah. I don't remember, because the hydrogen burned up, and the people who died were ones who jumped. That's what it was. Is that it?

Did we do a show on that? We've talked about it before. Yeah? Yeah, on one of our many, many, many short-lived video series. Oh, right, of course. So at any rate, Ellen Church changed the face of the flight attendant industry. And then in the 60s and 70s, of course, it was sort of a,

and this is not me talking here. This is in the article. It was the sexy stewardess phase of airline travel. Yeah. And that was definitely the deal, that you had weight limits and height limits. You had to look a certain way. And they put you in just the right outfit.

And it was all about sort of, hey, get up there and look good and serve drinks. So, and there were like those limits you talk about? Yeah. Technically, they're still around. There are weight limits and height limits. But they're restricted to, you can't be so short that you can't reach the overhead bins.

Yeah, they're all practical limits. Right, you can't be so tall that you're just bumping your head all over the place. Yeah. You have to be of the adequate size to fit into a jump seat that the flight attendants sit in. Yeah. But that's it.

Back then, it was you have to weigh like no more than 120 pounds. You have to be this height. And it had everything to do with looks and attractiveness. Yeah, and you're 32, so you're fired. Yeah, that was the thing. Like very early on, I think in the 50s, I think in the 1950s, they started, airlines started instituting

age restrictions, where once you got to age 32, you were no longer eligible to be a flight attendant. You might have a job down on the ground, but you couldn't be a flight attendant anymore because you were too old, according to them. Plus also, you couldn't be married. Or have kids. Right.

Yeah, it's very restrictive back in the day. Also, maybe the most sexist industry that's ever existed. And of course, that's airline dependent. It's not like there was a federal regulation. Right, yeah. So it all depended. But you need a high school diploma at the very least these days.

But they're very competitive jobs to get. Gone are the days where you can just waltz in there with a headshot and get a job as a flight attendant. A lot of people want these gigs. And so if you have a college degree, then you definitely have a leg up these days. Definitely. But it's always been pretty competitive.

Supposedly in 2006, Delta announced that they had 1,000 openings and got like 100,000 applications. But it's always been really competitive. Because from the beginning, it was viewed as really glamorous. In the beginning. In the beginning, for sure. I don't know about from the beginning. So because it's been a really competitive career truck

and because the airlines were run by men who decided that they owned their flight attendants because they ran the airlines, there was in that 60s, the swinging 60s era of that sexy stewardess thing you were talking about, they were a major draw for airlines. And the airlines advertised them as such. So I found something.

This is in that Travel and Leisure article I found. You ready for this? I am. This is going to knock your socks off. Purposefully didn't send this to you because you wanted my socks to be on the floor. Yeah. So national airlines in the 60s had an advertisement

where they had flight attendants Debbie, Cheryl, and Karen. And they could fly me. They also had an alternate slogan. I'm going to fly you like you've never been flown before. And these are print ads? Yeah. OK. Continental, well, Continental's was lame.

Braniff had one, their advertising said, does your wife know you're flying with us? Yeah. Pacific Southwest said, you want an aisle seat because all of our flight attendants have mini skirts and sometimes they drop stuff, basically. And then get this, Eastern Airlines gave out little black books to their male passengers

so they could get the numbers of the stewardesses, the flight attendants. And then Qantas had a slogan, ever seen a tickle fight? Crazy. You're right. That's basically the sentiment behind it. And so you've got the airlines advertising this. And then the flight attendants' unions

are fighting this stuff tooth and nail to be treated in a dignified manner and not be fired because you weigh 122 pounds. Right. It's just crazy. This is like, this was the way that it was back then. Yeah, your show for work. And it's like, hey, honey, get on the scale.

And when's your birthday again? Yeah. Terrible. You kind of went to a Bill Clinton there. Sounded a little Bill Clinton-y. I thought it sounded like W. All right, well, let's take a break then and work on our presidential accents.

And we'll come back and talk about post 9-11 flying. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so we did mention that after 9-11, things, of course, did change. And things changed in a big way for flight attendants.

Not that they never trained on safety, but I think the training got way more intense. Yeah, did you see that one I sent you? Yeah. From, I think, the Points Guy's website. Yeah, we should go over that now, actually. So he has a flight attendant insider who writes quite a bit for his site.

I don't remember her name, but just look up the Points Guy Flight Attendant Insider. And she goes into great detail about what it's like to go through training. And it is more intense than I realized it was, for sure. Yeah, and this depends on the airline's but they sort of give averages. The average training is seven weeks, but they can be as

long as 12 weeks. We're talking six days a week, 12 hours a day. And they call it Barbie Boot Camp because you don't show up in your sweats and tank top with no makeup. Right, it's not like you're a passenger. No, yeah, exactly. You're big fuzzy slippers and you're pillow from home. No, you show up as if you are there to work a flight.

So you have to be in whatever attire that they require you to be in and have your hair done however you would do it. And just basically be game day ready. And then they work you that many hours a day because that's about how many hours a day you're going to be working. Yeah, when you quite attendant. When you start working, at first you have very little control over your own schedule.

Although I get the impression you have flexibility out of the gate, but if you say I want to work this many days a month, that's the input you have at first until you start to develop seniority. So yeah, they expose you to that. Six days a week, 12 hours a day during training. For many weeks. So the first thing they do is learn all the safety

equipment. They're given written tests that she said that they had to score at least a 90 on. 80. I said that really weird, didn't I? Yeah, well, she said if it was 80, they had to retake it. So they had to score at least a 90 to pass. I got you.

And then practical exams, where you had to score 100% on these practical tests. And that basically means you were on a fake plane doing the thing. And it's not like you're serving that Diet Coke wrong. It's mainly 90% of this training, 95% of this training. Yeah, that's what she said. Is equipment, safety, all that stuff.

Right, like the first stuff where they're giving you these tests that you have to score high on is here's all of the stuff you need to know about the equipment. And then there's the drills where you're showing that you know how to use it in these simulated emergencies, right? You know, like smoke's pouring in a cabin. What do you do? Did you see that one picture of Emirates Airlines?

It's like the big, like a third of an Emirates plane, basically the main cabin with the slide out going into a pool inside like a hanger. And you're like, oh, they're going to have to go down that slide. Yeah, that's not true. There's no way they're not going down that slide and high heels and everything too.

But they're running these drills. And apparently this is a big, this is where most people wash out, she said, was during the drills because it's so stressful. And also she points out that because this job always has been and still is so competitive that the airlines can choose to be super picky. So they will drop you from these training programs pretty

easily and quickly because they know that they can find somebody else who could do it better, right? Yeah, so you end up with the cream of the crop in the end. Exactly, that's a really good way to put it. And then she says that really the last thing they learn and the stuff that they spend the least amount of time on is the actual customer service stuff, like pushing the beverage cart.

Where they know exactly what to do during, if sudden turbulence hits and there's a beverage cart, they are taught less how to pour that Diet Coke or whatever. I think I could do that. The pouring the stuff, I would get so stressed out. The whole thing, like I've seen it enough now. We travel enough for work where if a flight attendant was like, oh, my ankle.

I could throw on the vest and run beverage service. You'd be like, step aside, I've got this. Like I know exactly how they're doing it. I'm paying attention. Would you splint the person's ankle first and then take over beverage service? I would splint the ankle and then I would get up. Do you want peanuts, pretzels, or biscoff cookie?

Yeah. What kind of drink you want? Can't serve peanuts anymore. Sure you can. I had peanuts the other day. What? Yeah. You had peanuts.

On a flight. Yeah, I think they don't serve peanuts if someone's allergic. But I don't think they ban any peanuts. It was my impression they have just stopped. I've been on so many flights where they're like, we've got peanuts, but you can't have them because 13E is allergic and everybody's like, no. Now they have almonds.

Yeah, they did have almonds on a Delta flight the other day that was on. They're delicious. You had peanuts on a flight. That's like a Cela canth. And then I'm a sucker for those Delta cookies, though. Are you, I have desensitized to them. I actually just do pretzels now.

Does biscoff cookies? I used to be a junkie for them. I like them. Yeah. I mean, it's just a little cinnamon. A little treat in the air. A little shortbread something or other. It's like a gingerbread kind of.

But it's called speculose, which is the worst name for a dessert treat on the planet. It says that on the package? Speculose. It's like, yeah, that's the original Dutch name for that. I'll tell you where the money is, Chuck. Where's that? I don't remember what airline it is,

but they have this Dutch treat. It's two thin, very sweet waffle cookies with a caramel like inside, caramel sandwich. And they say, take this thing and put it over your hot coffee and let the steam from the coffee warm it up. And brother, you were on cloud nine. Who tells you that? The flight attendant?

The package. Oh, OK. The flight attendant doesn't tell you that. Right. They just go, here, read this package. That sounds like some fancy international type of flying. No, it was domestic. I think it was Midwestern, though.

There's a lot of European immigrants from the 19th century. Right. So that would exerting their influence in all the best foodie ways. Yeah. We got sidetracked there. Where were we? Well, we were talking about how difficult the training

actually is. Yeah, and that's sort of the long and short of it. I mean, it's long. It's sort of grueling, and at the very end is when you learn just that. She said that you learn that 5% of time you spend is what you end up doing 99% of the time, but you just have to be so prepared for that 1%

in case something goes wrong. You can just react on instinct. Well, what made me feel really good was that she said the flight attendants you were flying with are so well trained, and they also have to go back for annual training every year to learn new stuff that the airlines have figured out, learn new procedures, whatever.

And anytime, say, an airline deploys a new jet in its fleet, they got to go figure that out because the safety stuff's in different places, and they need to know this stuff, and they need to be able to remember it and act on it during an emergency. So I guess I didn't really realize this, but any flight attendant on a commercial aircraft that you're flying is capable of saving your life,

should an emergency arise. Yeah, I mean, they talk about they even go through baby birth and training. Right, so the next time you want to yell at them because they're saying the overhead space is full, remember that that person can save your life if this plane starts to go down or lands in the water or something. And it's not their fault the overhead space is full.

It's all the people who put their bag up and then walk to the back of the plane. Are you talking about the worst people on earth? The worst people on earth, and they took their shoes off as they were walking back. Oh man, why do people do that? I don't know, but I was on a flight the other day, and I've never seen overhead space more screwed up

by just a handful of people who did that. It was crazy, like toward the end, people who were sitting in like the first five rows after first class were having to go to the back of the plane. And you're just like watching them like, oh man, you poor person, as you're walking off the plane and they're just sitting there waiting to get their bag. Yeah.

It's crazy. Yeah, I think when they started charging for bags, that's when everything went berserk because nobody wants to check their bag except me. I don't mind now. Yeah, it's crazy to me. Yeah, I've never lost a bag, so I don't mind. I don't have to sweat it.

I mean, this is, if I'm just going on a work trip, I don't even have my roller bag anymore. I have my, I know a buzz mark of them all day, my red ox. Oh really? Red ox shoulder bag. Yeah. The thing is great and I can fit everything in there, but if I'm going on like a vacation,

I don't know, you think it's heresy, but I will check that bag and relax my day away. I'm not trying to yuck you yum here. Yeah. If you want to check your bag, that's fine. Or gate check it, that's the good deal because you don't have to pay there. Okay, I have no problem with gate checking it at the plane,

so it's just stowed in a handy manner so you just walk off and they hand it to you. That's fine, but there are very few things that you can do that is a bigger waste of time than standing around waiting for your bag to make it to the bag carousel. I hate doing that, especially when you're ready for vacation to start.

Yeah, I don't mind because most airports, my bag's cruising around that thing by the time I get to baggage. Oh yeah? Yeah, for me. And that's just because I don't know, I don't like having to mess with fighting a bag, a suitcase on a plane.

I don't like contributing to that whole process. Sure. Much less being a business traveler, like you see those dudes that have the roller bag with the big bag on top of that, and then a backpack. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, dude, that's like you got three pieces of luggage. Yep, need to merge them.

All right, but this is not about just us complaining about traveling. No, all the flights are like, get back to the flight attendants, get back to us. So customer service, it is the goal of the flight attendant to keep you happy as possible. But also, they don't have to indulge you once you have passed the point of sobriety,

or just jerkness. They don't deal with that stuff anymore. Like they will stop boarding the plane if you're a drunk before you get on and have you escorted off. It's serious business now. You shouldn't get on a plane if you're loaded. No, time was, they would get you loaded on the plane.

No, they don't mess with that. But their long days, so like we said, 12 hour days, they are, if you're new, like you said earlier, they don't have a ton of control over their schedule. So you're gonna be working a lot of weekends. Everybody's gonna be working some weekends. You're gonna be doing overnight trips, spending the night in cities,

and that can sometimes be fun if you put a positive spin on it. Sure. Or it can be a big drag. Yeah, but one thing that I had seen across the board from all the sources I hit for this was that you, it's up to you how much or how little you fly. Up to, I think, 100 hours a month.

There's like a maximum you can work. Right. They're probably minimums too, don't you think, or no? Not that I saw. I'm sure they- Probably minimums to get perks. Probably do. But I get the impression that that's actually,

once you've done it for like six months. Typically when you're hired on for an airline, you're on a probationary six month period. On the perks? Yeah, because they don't want just, you know. Number one, they don't know you from anybody. They've known you for seven weeks. They just trained you.

Right, you're like, I want 10 buddy passes and then I'm gonna quit my job. Exactly. Well, I saw another thing too. Apparently, buddy passes are like the worst thing that's ever happened to a flight attendant. Oh yeah. Because everybody begs for them.

But they are like really actually bad passes. Like you're at the end of standby. And if you're friend, if you give the buddy pass to your friend and they start yelling at the gate agent, you get in trouble because it was your buddy pass that was being used. You might even have your perks revoked

because your friend was a jerk to the gate attendant. And everybody's always asking you for them. So a lot of people just don't even touch the buddy pass perk. That's like if you're a country club member, you're responsible for the behavior of your guests. Right, now. Not that I would know.

There are other perks. You know, you've seen Catty Shack. Yeah, but I've never like belonged to a country club. There are other perks where like family members, immediate family members, sometimes extended family members, spouses, they get the same perks you do, which very frequently is like you just pay taxes

on the ticket and you fly for free. That's different. Like all flight attendants take advantage of that. Some of them will hop on over to Europe or something for, you know, lunch. 100 bucks. Yeah, maybe. If that.

In tax? Yeah. Well, buddy passes used to be a lot easier when they didn't oversell all the flights. You know, like I used to have friends back in the day, I'd get a buddy pass, fly, no problem. But now you're right, you're in a bad position. Yeah, you are.

Do you remember flights where like entire rows would be empty? It was the best. They'd be like, well, the flight was scheduled so we have to stick to it. It's strange now. What a day. So you're gonna be working 75 to 80

five hours a month generally, but like you said, I guess you can't go over that 100 mark. And interestingly too, another thing you get trained for is very sadly, human trafficking these days, they will fly kidnapped people right in front of people's faces. And so flight attendants now are trained to spot this kind of activity, which can mean like

an adult who doesn't really understand about the final destination. That's a bad sign. Or if it's like an adult traveler with a minor and they just, it definitely looks like a little more than parental behavior going on. Like don't get up and go to the bathroom and that kind of thing.

Apparently that's how it started. There was a man who caught the suspicion of a flight attendant named Sandra Fiorini. She worked for American Airlines. She noticed that like a late 18 year old teenager, age guy who had an infant that still had the umbilical cord attached and like a bottle of milk in his pocket and a couple of diapers

stuffed in his pocket, his other pocket. So like this baby was stolen or bought or something. And she started looking into it and found out that this was actually a big deal and teamed up with a woman named Deborah Sigmund who founded Innocence at Risk. And they kind of started this program where now if you're a flight attendant,

one of the things you're trained for is to recognize human trafficking. And they actually, a bunch of flight attendants volunteered at the last Super Bowl to look for human trafficking because apparently the Super Bowl is like also the Super Bowl of prostitution and human trafficking in the world every year.

So flight attendants went to the Super Bowl and volunteered to kind of like keep tabs on things and call out people they thought were human trafficked. You mean the big game? Yeah, somebody wrote in and said, you can call it Super Bowl, it can't do anything. Yeah, you can't like advertise anything using those words. Right.

I don't think. We can't sell our Super Bowl bobble heads that we have a box full of. It's too bad. It was a poor investment. Should we take our final break here? Yeah. All right, let's do that.

We'll talk a little bit more about some of the perks and drawbacks right after this. MUSIC On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts

flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, let's talk about pay. Baby.

You don't make a ton of money. Think starting salaries in the mid 30s? Oh, no, no. For a flight attendant? That's no, no. Starting salary can be like 18. Oh, really? The median in 2012 or 13 or 14 was 37.

The median? Yeah. That's like, that's the middle. That's not much, you know? That's why it's such an attractive job for people who are just looking for extra money. Right. If you're a parent and you have so much control

over your schedule once you start to get some seniority, it's a great, great way to spend your money. If you're a soap opera star, it's a great, great extra job. Did you see that? Yeah, what was her name? Kate Linder, who plays Esther Valentine on The Young and the Restless. Who knew?

She's a flight attendant as well. For like 32 years. And she's done them both for about the same amount of time. Yeah. And she does it like every week. Yeah, and she says it helps keep her grounded, no pun intended. Yeah, she didn't say the no pun intended part.

Yeah, but she gets those perks, she gets to fly to Europe for lunch if she wants, and act on soaps. Right, it's good for her. And that's not to say that that median, I mean, obviously that's the middle amount, but it goes much higher than that. And it all has to do, all perks, all pay, all benefits, all that stuff.

The flight attendant profession is all about seniority. Oh, sure. And there are plenty of flight attendants out there who are career flight attendants. And like Kate Linder, she's been doing it for 32 years. There's another woman named Candy Bruton, who is a 43-year veteran of flight attendant. Yeah.

You can make a long, happy career out of it now that they've taken that age restriction off. Yeah, $21.23 a few years ago, an hour, was the rate for a first-year attendant. So plus $20 an hour. But here's the thing, and this is something that I bet 95% of human beings don't realize. When you were sitting on that plane and those doors are open

and they're getting you your first-class drinks, or they're helping you put your bags away and you're complaining because you don't have a pillow and coach, they're doing that for almost free because the only hours that they get paid for at that rate are flight hours. Yeah, when it says the boarding doors now closed, the clock just started for them.

Never knew that. No, I didn't either. They get something like, depending on the airline, maybe $1.50 to $1.95 an hour for the boarding stuff, the pre-while the doors open stuff, I guess is what you call it. Yeah, so like next time you're sitting on the tarmac and you're delayed for two hours and you're super grumpy,

think about that flight attendant who is getting paid almost nothing to be dealing with how grumpy you are. If the boarding doors closed, they would be getting paid, right? No, they said in here, if flight delays, like flight time is the only thing that matters. I thought it was once the doors closed. So if the doors closed and you go out to the runway and you're just sitting there on the runway,

they would be getting paid, I thought. That's not what it said. Somebody let us know. Because it said in the article, if next time you're on a big flight delay, think about the fact that they're not making any money. I know you're saying. And that's probably why the airline put it in there

because can you imagine how much money they would have to pay in flight attendants for flight delays? Yeah, but it's not like the flight attendants are just like, I'm off the clock. Don't bother me. Once we get into the air, you can bother me. You don't hear that. So they should be paying them for that.

Hey, I agree. You know? I think we should band together and start a social movement here. I wonder why you should tip flight attendants, too. Yeah, that's not a thing. They should stand, the end when they stand there and say good day and hope you enjoyed your flight,

they should be holding a jar as far as I'm concerned. It's shaking it. Yeah, throw five bucks in there on your way out. Bye-bye. I think that'd be great. You remember Tina Muklau, the hero of the DB Cooper heist? Yeah. He tried to give her $10,000, $20,000 and she said,

no tipping allowed. That's right. What a hero. And quite often flight attendants are the heroes on many flights, whether it is dealing with literally a terrorist and trying to manage that situation bravely or God forbid some sort of incident in the air with a plane itself.

But at the very least, those jerks on planes that think they can just talk to people however they want, they gotta put up with a lot in a very cramped space. Very early on in flight attendant history, I don't know if we said or not, you said that Ellen Church was a registered nurse, but that was par for the course for early flight attendants. They had to be registered nurses.

Makes sense. There was one named Nelly Granger who was a TWA flight attendant and she was on a flight, go into Pittsburgh I believe in 1936 and it crashed. And she pulled a couple of passengers to safety and made it down the mountain to get help and went back up with the rescuers to help minister to the two injured passengers whose lives she saved.

And she got 30 cents an hour. She got a trip to the Indies with her aunt. That's nice. By TWA, yeah. I got a couple more things. Sure. There's some crazy stuff that flight attendants have seen. The one that gets me though is dead bodies on planes

that are purposefully brought onto planes. Not people who die. Apparently Singapore Airlines has what's called a corpse closet on their planes to stow a passenger who might die midair. That's nice. They're in the minority there. I think they might be peculiar with that.

But sometimes because shipping a body is very expensive, it can run into the thousands and thousands of dollars. Some people say, well, it'd be cheaper if I just bought a plane ticket or put my mother in a garment bag and just smuggle her body on board and took her where she's gonna be buried myself. Yeah.

That a guy got caught doing that in Miami. There was in this mental floss article, the person who was interviewed said her roommate found a mother and a daughter trying to smuggle the dead father onto a flight just in a wheelchair and said that he had the flu, but he was clearly dead and they had to stop the plane mid-flight.

Wow. Maybe he did have the flu. No, he was dead. No, I mean, maybe that's how he died. Oh, maybe he previously had the flu. Yeah, it could have been like, there's a kernel of truth to what we just said. That's it.

Oh, and don't order Diet Coke because apparently it takes the longest to stop fizzing on a trolley, okay? That's science. If you want to know more about flight attendants, just chat up a flight attendant. I'm sure they'd love to tell you some great stories. And in the meantime, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm gonna call this PSA about the flu because we had someone, Courtney Harmouth, who's a Scotty, who says this, hey guys, want to basically give you a PSA about how dangerous the flu can be. In 2012, was a healthy high school freshman who suddenly stricken with a horrible digestive distress, chills, fever, coughing after a week or so.

My parents took me to the GP and I was told to go to the hospital for observation and get an IV. What was supposed to be one night turned into a month. I'd contracted the swine flu. Oh my gosh. That first night my vitals went crazy and I ended up having to be kept to my local hospital

for two weeks. During my stay, I developed pneumonia as a complication. Soon after that, flu had began to fill my lungs and I had to be helicoptered to a larger hospital in Madison. She said being in a helicopter was pretty sweet though. Oh really? Yeah, even though, you know.

I would think being sick in a helicopter would not be comfortable. I think she's a bright side person. For about 20 minutes, I was only taking in about 30% oxygen. My parents were told I could have brain damage or may even die. Upon my arrival to the larger hospitals,

I was immediately put into a medically induced coma for 11 days. Oh my gosh. I was finally taken out of my coma. I had atrophied and weighed a measly 95 pounds at 12 years old. I had to relearn how to walk, write and use basic motor skills.

I am extremely lucky. I am completely recovered from the ordeal. Did not suffer any long-term health effects. And now at 23 years old, I've thankfully not had the flu since. I tell this to everyone to say, please get vaccinated against the flu. The flu vaccine doesn't just protect you,

but also your kids, parents, friends and coworkers. Really love your show. I wanna thank you for doing such a great job about important and sometimes hilarious topics. That is our Wisconsinite fan, Courtney Harmouth. Thanks a lot, Courtney. Glad you made it through that one. That was pretty scary.

Yeah, we said the flu could be dangerous. There you have it. Courtney, just prove it, everybody. If you wanna tell us a great story that is harrowing and amazing, we wanna hear it. Or if you have a good flight attendant story, that's a good one too. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast or at Josh Clark.

You can hang out with us on facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.