DAY IN THE LIFE

I'm a fight attendant.

I don't talk about it much as it is a bit of a screw-you to a design and art world that became too competitive and too corporate to be in the slightest bit interesting to me.  So I answered an ad on Indeed that said, "become a flight attendant!"

I always loved to fly and adored airports for the air of excitement and anticipation in every person you passed.  Everyone going somewhere... even when I was a kid and would stay at my grandmother's apartment in "the city" and the sound of cars passing her building at night kept me up wondering where they were all going.

So I'm a flight attendant.  In the world of Covid-19.

I don't get to stay home to quarantine.  Several times a month, I wake up at the crack of dawn, down my coffee with a slice of toast, check my crew bags to make sure I have enough food for the trip and nylon gloves.  ID?  check.  Passport?  check.  Required items?  check.  Slide my black scarf up over my nose, don my gloves, and slip out into the morning, trying not to wake the neighbors with the crack of the door closing.

It's dead quiet on the sidewalk.  No cars drive by, no people walking to the subway to work, and no tourists starting their day of site seeing.  Just me.  Maybe a runner... maybe a truck drives by on the avenue...


I get to my subway and I'm alone.  15 minutes to the next A train.  I slide my scarf down and check my phone for any flight delays or cancellations.  They can come at any time these days.  The subway arrives and it is packed... with sleeping homeless people.  Mostly men.  The floor is sticky with spilled soda and urine.  I hopscotch around the puddles to find a seat that seems relatively clean, my scarf back up over my nose for more than just exposure to the virus, but now to try and avoid the smell that will accompany me for the next 70-80 minutes.  Sometimes I see someone else, also trying to dodge the sights and smells for a seat.  We look at each other for a brief moment, expressionless beneath our facial coverings, but acknowledging that we both have a reason for being here.  They are also an essential worker... another first responder.

I arrive at Howard Beach, my one faceless companion long gone, and I cart my crew bags up the escalator to an empty Air Train.  Some other workers stand there, far more than 6 feet away, and we all 3 or 4 enter the train to an abbreviated list of terminals, Terminal 2 no longer accessible and closed for the time being.  We pass empty long term parking, and empty lots where once stood long lines of hotel shuttles.  Maybe one person gets on or off.  Nobody looks at anybody else.  I check my phone again, this time for the gate.  I check the manifest and it says 11 people, no children, infants, wheelchairs.  Mostly deadheading pilots and other flight attendants headed to other airports to sit and wait to work a flight out.  There are no excited tourists, or anticipatory business people en route to meetings in some far flung location.

I get to my terminal and with a slight delay in the flight I head outside to slide my scarf down and breathe some fresh air for a moment.  There are almost no cars, only 2 or 3 cabs, and very occasionally a transfer bus, so the air is quiet except for the sound of birds and wind, rarely broken by jet engines.  It used to be that this moment to myself was all I might get all day.  Today and most days now, it is commonplace to be outside alone somewhere, waiting.

Atlanta Terminal D, rush hour.

I pass empty shops and gated newstands near my gate, with the exception of a Dunkin Donuts, the only refuge for a coffee.  No line.  It's the same at every airport.  I arrive at my gate and there are only 3 passengers after all.  One is a Jet Blue pilot heading home.  The other crew members are in various degrees of mask, gloves, and hand sanitizer, all waiting for the plane to be fogged for germs.  It takes some time these days, but with only 3 passengers, boarding isn't exactly a time consumer.  I watch from the gate as the rampers load some boxes into the cargo hold.  It's medical supplies.  A few have rather telling labels on them.  That must be blood.  The other day I watched them load in a coffin.  We all board and set up the plane for flight: check all the safety equipment mostly.  There is no service anymore, so catering loads sanitized baggies with water and snacks on the plane for the passengers.  We don't even have coffee supplies to make it for ourselves.  [Thus Dunkin Donuts].




Everyone is boarded... we do the announcements, even though some of what we are required to say now makes little sense.  We close the main cabin door, alert the pilots that the plane is secure for take off, and do our demo.  All 3 passengers are sitting in first class... without anybody in the main cabin the aft flight attendant looks at me with a shrug and puts her demo equipment down.  I smile and nod that she might as well not.  There is nobody there to do it for.

There is nothing really to do now on board... we walk through the cabin every 10 or 15 minutes in case anybody needs anything, but no, they all know there is nothing to ask for.  So we all smile at each other - unseen except for a slight lift of people's eyes and mask that is the telltale sign that their lips are curled up at the edges... and sometimes have a conversation about where they are going, why they are flying, or how they would just rather sleep until we land.  The stories are varied but all center on the virus.  Some are flying home having not been able to get out sooner... some are leaving to take care of family members, some are medical and emergency workers... none are there for pleasure, all are worried, and all spend a lot of time cleaning the seats and tray tables with their treasured clorox wipes.  We do the announcement about how the airline is cleaning each plane, when and of course, how to best be safe on the flight.  We know it is redundant, but we do it anyway.

We keep a close eye on the flight boards.  They are virtually empty.  With 90-95% of all flights cancelled, there are very few flight going in and out of the airports.  Many of our flight schedules start early in the morning, but without the usual schedule, often we sit in airports or are given a day room at a hotel for 5-8 hours to sit and wait for the next flight we are working on.  When we finish our days, we end up in hotels in other cities where there are no restaurants open, and only a few places to deliver if at all.  Bringing your own food is more important than ever before.  Most of what we pack in our crew bags, is food.  Sometimes we stay there for a long night into an afternoon -- sometimes we have to be at the airport at 5 or 6 in the morning, for another long sit between flights.

The other people staying in the hotels are also pilots and flight attendants.  So we pass each other in the hallways, knowing what each other's days are like.

Through all of this, we have to constantly sanitize everything we touch, gloves or not.

For the first time since I've been flying, people do occasionally say, thank you.  Many forget that we are on the front lines, in narrowly spaced metal tubes, constantly facing the public.  Yes, there are those who are impolite or quick to judge a passenger, but most of us are well trained, feel responsible for the lives of everyone on board, and wouldn't be in the job if we didn't like people and care about them.  We've all been given the choice to take a voluntary leave of absence.  However for some of us, this is what we do.

This is my job.

Stay safe.