Etihad = Sketihad

I've been doing some covert research again lately as I had a day off work and I wanted something to laugh at. At the end of 2013, I had a mad idea in my head that I wanted to move back to the UAE and decided to apply for Etihad as cabin crew. My intentions weren't just about you my dear readers- I was thinking about the local scenery. I knew I wouldn't stand a chance at passing the medical and I'd shit myself if they asked me to jump into 10 feet of water fully clothed and pull up a colleague on the life raft so I decided to go along to the assessment day just in case other, ground-based opportunities were mentioned and if any local men were there for me to ogle. You see, 2013 was the year I became single again after leaving the waste of space chav in PILFs clothing and had a brief romance with a UAE national- but that's another blog. Trust me, proper top shelf Ann Summers reading. I expected Etihad would be the passport to fit foreign men on tap and possible mile high scenarios like this pic:

 

But of course I am a lot slimmer than her and wouldn't have my hair ragged back in a bun. Anyway, from what I witnessed at my Etihad interview, it looked more like this:

 

I had never seen so many commoners in all my life. This is how the day started.

9am- Hilton Hotel at Manc Airport. I stayed the night as good cabin crew always come early (PILFs shouldn't though, you understand.)Always be prepared, read up on the airline you're going to be working for and stand out in a good way. Some of these bints looked an absolute show. About 100 girls and 2 blokes (awww they were doing it for the puh-sayyy) were standing round the hotel reception and there was no sense of organisation whatsoever. They looked starstruck as if they were looking for Simon Cowell to make them the next Leona, eagerly fiddling with their name badges. These birds were less X-Factor and more floptastic Fame Academy though. Some of them had made no effort whatsoever. Like the Thomson interview I spied on, kitten heels seemed to be a running theme amongst the Yorkshire lasses. I even saw one Polish tart WITH THE PRICE LABELS ON UNDER HER SHOES!!! Good job I was short sighted as I might have groaned, cringed and maybe puked if I had seen it was a Deichmann label.


Stay tuned for the rest......... I'll write the rest when I stop getting images of polyester bodycon suits and cheap shoes out of my head.

Economy Plus tossers

Hi passengers! After being suspended from Twitter yet again (think it's because I told the Prince of Dubai he was a permanent fixture in my wankbank but am waiting for Twitter to confirm this, those dumbass Yanks probably don't know what like a like wankbank is like y'all.) I am going to be blogging a lot more now about the issues that affect me and my fellow passengers. Really hard hitting issues like should fat bastards be allowed on planes, should female pilots be allowed to fly on routes with single female girls wanting to cop off with a pilot and is it mandatory that Faro passengers are all ugly twats who have the complexion of a golf ball? Today's hot topic is Economy Plus tossers. If you're of that unfortunate generation of youngsters who only know budget airlines, you won't understand this post.

Most 'proper' airlines offer something called economy plus which is basically the gooch of business and economy class. If you don't know what a gooch is, then go and read a travelogue from a twatty Daily Mail reporter instead. Economy plus is cheaper than business but has more legroom than economy and maybe an extra snack thrown in which leads us to our first Economy Plus twat....

The Foxtrot Bravo

Airline staff know that is the not so secretive codename we give to our lardy passengers, short for Fat Barsteward. Most Foxtrot Bravos live off benefits and tend not to have the wardrobe, the job or the overdraft to pay for business class so they will go for Eco Plus to get that much coveted extra legroom and seat width of course- most fatties suffer bagpeel, their overweight ballbags sticking to the side of the thigh in the style of a cardboard Vienetta box sticking to a poorly maintained freezer and needing to be ripped right off. Fat birds always have those massive norks and don't know what a brassiere is so the extra width of the seat will stop them swinging into the passenger next to them like a wibbly wobbly wrecking ball. There is also a bit extra food on there too. I discovered this when I flew economy plus as I used to be married to a right gobshite who paid for economy plus. He comes into our next category...

Small Man Syndrome

I have nothing against small men as height isn't the first thing I notice when I look at him- fitness is an attitude, a complete package you see- but my ex-husband had a bad case of small man syndrome. He was 5'8 which I don't think is small at all, but it bothered him to the point that he would lie on medical forms about his size and buy trousers too big for him which would be trailing the floor! He also complained about the legroom on most flights and insisted on Economy Plus as a way of asserting his 'manhood'. He couldn't afford the big car, so Eco Plus it had to be instead. Small Man Syndrome sufferers usually are a trolley dolly's worst nightmare too- they tend to pick on the smaller, younger hosties and call them bitches, constantly sending drinks back and pressing that damn callbell. They are the ones who do the check in staff's head in too, demanding the exit row or an aisle seat as 'I am sooo tall and I get cramp in my legs' and when this tactic fails, they use the old 'weak bladder' excuse as 'I am constantly needing the toilet and don't want to disturb my fellow passengers'. Yawn.

Nouveau Riche Chav wannabe

Eco Plus is full of chavs, for some inexplicable reason this is always on Vuuuurgin flights from Manchestuurrr to Orlanduuurrr and are mainly from Sauff Yaaarkshuurr. They probably have decided to upgrade as they have just cashed their sovereigns in on Cash for Gold or sent a load of 90s trance CDs to Music Magpie or their relative has invented yet another fake illness to sue their former employer at the mines/steelworks/biscuit factory. They want to show their bumpkin mates and 'those posh cunts from darn Sarf' that Yaarkshire folk are just as good as everyone else and wear their wealth by wearing their tracksuits to fly Eco Plus. Needless to say, they make the most of the free flowing ale on board. Chantelle, Tyler and Keeley are all rat arsed before they're out of UK airspace!

To summarise:

1. If you can't extend your penis, go Economy Plus
2. Yorkshire people call Orlando Orlandurrr
3. The Prince of Dubai is frigging fit

Thick cunts and practical jokes

Practical jokes are one thing that can make a working day go so much quicker, especially if the joke is on a thick new colleague! Flying is no different to any other job, we LOVE practical jokes here, unless you work for Lufthansa or Flybe that is, where the joke is looking back in the mirror at you. Here are some of our faves:

The Long Stand- an oldie but a goodie. I can't believe people still fall for it, so it's best playing it on some wet behind the ears 20 year old or someone who speaks English as a second language. Rumour has it that a planeload of passengers missed their flight because the pilot never came back after his long stand. I'm not going to describe what happens in a long stand, because if you need that explaining to you, then you are a fucking hopeless bastard.

Petrol Points- The pilot will give the new cabin crew his BP points card and tell her to tell the refueller to add some points to it. Yes, the thick twats fall for it every time.

Safety Demo- the perfect opportunity to make a show of someone in front of a planeload of people. Fill their lifejacket with sugar or drink stirrers. Stick a page 3 girl inside the safety card for the plane to ogle/laugh at. Put something foul smelling in the oxygen mask. Put glue in the seatbelt so the poor twat cannot open it, looking like a right awkward numpty.

Locking someone in the bog- When your new recruit is doing the toilet check or on the toilet, lock them in by lifting up the flap that says 'lavatory' on the door and putting a 1 euro coin in the lock. They can't get out, no matter how hard they try!!! It's funny!!

Posh wank- fill a condom with liquid soap, leave it in the toilet and send them in to do a toilet check

Napkin Service- give a dopey looking new recruit a load of napkins and a pair of tongs and tell her to give each passenger a napkin before landing. She'll love this if it's a budget airline, she'll think she's been promoted to Emirates!

Female Pilots

Hi passengers! Long time no see- I've been a bit quiet of late and you've probably been waiting longer for me to post than a young Flight Deck Floozie waits for her Viagra-induced sugar daddy to shoot his load! Anyway, a lot of my male passengers have been asking me one of life's mysterious questions- what are female pilots like? Are they as randy as male pilots or are they a bunch of Clare Balding body doubles?

Like real pilots (sorry, I was a 1950s man of the house there for a bit) and air hostesses, female pilots have different breeds too. Let us begin with the obvious one...

The Female PILF

The female PILF is a right little minx. Usually blonde, British and horsey posh or curvaceous Latina, the female PILF confuses both lads and girls with her mix of beauty and brains. She is Barbie in a man's world. Don't be fooled though, some of them can be right slags but get away with it thanks to their high salary (they ain't no golddiggers) and their combination of posh accent and intellect. Put it this way, you'd never hear a female PILF speaking South Yaaarkshire while watching TOWIE. These broads get their kicks by prickteasing the straight male air hosts, sending out the wrong signals and humiliating the poor bastards behind their backs, telling Base Captain Nigel and her male colleagues the shite chat up lines they come out with. As IF a female pilot would date someone in an orange uniform called Wayne from Bishops Stortford or some other shithole.

The Aviator

This female pilot is a figure to be respected. Never one to talk about her personal life, the Aviator is strictly that. Her first love is planes and people usually assume she is of the lesbian variety but she keeps her cards close to her chest. The conversation is strictly work work work but will play hard with the rest of the crew downroute. A great shoulder to cry on and will always stand up for you and the rest of the crew, the Aviator is the female pilot to admire.

The Token One

All employers deny it, but of course they have to stick to a quota of employing certain minority groups otherwise they'll get their arse sued. In this case, the minority group in question is the ladies. The Token One is usually a mediocre to shit pilot and if it were a man, she'd be sacked on the spot for her conduct. A bad team player (unless the team are men), ditzy and always moaning about that time of the month, The Token One is prone to pulling sickies and barely gets dragged into the office as 'she knows her rights'. She's the one who uses the autopilot to land. Believe me, I've been sat in the back and got my dinner all over me on landing thanks to that cow.

The Butch One

Yes, that old stereotype. There are butch female pilots to complement the dainty air hosts. A winning team. The Butch One is a great mate for lecherous old captains as they can discuss booze and birds together and can drink even the roughest, Yorkshirest Jet2 baggage handler under the table. They're damn good pilots too!

So to summarise:

1. Female pilots can be flight deck floozies too and have probably all joined the mile high club
2. Female pilots are real pilots too and don't have to make the tea and coffee for the captain
3. Yorkshire people are rough and don't tend to work as pilots

Big Bags of Sweets

Greetings passengers! You're probably wondering why I'm going to blog about sweets. Have you ever wondered why all the airlines sell massive bags of sweets and huge Toblerones? Sure, they're brilliant to flog to the Foxtrot Bravos there, they're just a snack for them and on the Amsterdam flight, the main audience is beaked-up students with the munchies. Big bags of sweets have another use as well though. They act as an icebreaker and also a pulling tool.

The new captain will always try to give the impression he's a caring kind of chap by bringing a big bag of sweeties to his crew on his first day after promotion. BEWARE. This act of kindness has ulterior motives, a bit like when a nonce asks his prey if he/she wants to see some puppies he's just rescued from the canal. Dopey young cabin crew munch happily away at Captain Bullshit's sweets as if they're at a teddy bears picnic, lulling them into a false sense of security. Before they know it, they'll be back at his nouveau riche-ly decorated flat, knickers off and not even breakfast in the morning. For the more mature crew member, it's a way of them playing good cop bad cop- they will offer you some sweets then on your next flight with them, they will be a complete cunt with you and not let you go to the duty free on turnaround.

Big bags of sweets are a great way for single passengers to pull as well. I was travelling on my own once and these two fit businessmen sat next to me, obviously thinking I was ignorant of the whole big bag of sweets trick and offered me a suck on their chocolate salty balls. It's more sophisticated and more social than the usual trick of pretending to spill something on someone or picking an imaginary piece of dust off that bit of skirt you fancy. Plus everyone loves sweets! Try it if you don't believe me!

THANK YOU BUDGET AIRLINES!

Hi you bunch of deviant American Airlines geriatric stewardess fanciers! Hope you all had a great summer and managed to avoid package holiday Trunki chav families from hell. Thankfully, we live in a modern society where air travel is cheap and we can fly where we want, when we want. This morning, I was lying on a sunlounger in a non-chav Mediterranean hotel, stuffed to the gills with a sumptuous buffet breakfast and thinking how grateful I am to Stelios and even that twat Paddy O'Leary or whatever his name is. Not only have they enabled cheap air travel, they have also let us have more frequent holidays, even the chavs can afford them now, meaning holidays aren't a treat anymore but something that we do about 3 or 4 times a year. Do you know what the two main benefits of this are? Not having to send postcards and not having to buy SHITE like the picture below for ungrateful little brats back home.

 

Postcards used to be a nuisance. To be honest, I used to love getting them, the lewder the better but writing them was a frigging chore. It was like a more expensive version of Christmas and a bigger case of one-upmanship. How could a card from Skegness possibly compare to one from Egypt? Then there was the chore of having to write the same thing to about 10 disinterested people. Having a lovely time, wish you were here, the weather is hot, food is great and went on a trip to a cathedral/ market/ chicken plucking production line. The secret was to either write big or big yourself up. If you were stuck in some boring hellhole like Britain or on a yawnsome sounding driving holiday of the Benelux, the only way out of the boring postcard trap was to send a filthy one. British tack shops are excellent at producing filth, whereas our European counterparts usually sell rubbish cards like two flea ridden donkeys at it or a Greek god airbrushed to make it look like a Bel Ami cast member. I had a hissy fit in Dubai when I found that there were no obscene cards whatsoever. No innuendo relating to humping a camel. What a disgrace. I remember half a day's holiday was wasted looking for cards, composing a nice long story, looking for a post office, arguing about the price of stamps then going to your hotel reception where they would give you a cheaper price of stamps only to bin your cards.

 

Souvenir shopping was like Christmas shopping- fun at first then only to become such a chore. Thank God for tight-arse luggage allowances and bans on liquid. Remember when you had to buy everyone some shite Greek firewater that they obviously didn't like and it would reappear at Xmas? Remember when you had to buy the brats in your family massive lollipops in the hope they would choke or some local toy covered in lead paint? It was like turkey on Boxing Day, nobody wants it but if you didn't get it, you'd moan. Holiday presents were exactly the same. It was worse than Secret Fucking Santa as you knew who'd get what. The family show off would always buy some knock off designer goods to prove they'd been to Turkey when it was still exotic (now they just bring back an STD and a toyboy's debt). The boring gits who holidayed in the UK would buy bog-standard chocolate from Tesco's plus a keyring with Cleethorpes written on. The chavs who'd never been abroad before would usually spend the most and get a Spanish doll/ Sombrero and accidentally on purpose leave the receipt in foreign in the bag to prove 'YES THEY HAVE ALLOWED ME TO GET A PASSPORT!' The poor kids would always be disappointed. What is a 5 year old going to do with a bottle opener with Costa Del Sol written on? How can a toddler play with an ornamental woman in Flamenco gear and a 'Channel Number 4' T-shirt from a lucky lucky man? Why on earth did people waste their cash and a day of a holiday on searching for rubbish gifts that went straight in the charity shop? And don't get me started on the booze- nets of liqueurs in colourful bottles, brandy in a bottle shaped as a guitar, that bottle of tequila with the plastic hat as a lid. Oh and there were the Canaries Cunts too- those people who upgraded from Benidorm to Puerto del Carmen and let on they were going on an African voyage only to admit it was the Canaries, then spend all their money in the tax free shops buying electrical goods and discontinued perfumes they didn't need or even like. 

 

I'd also like to give my thanks at this point to whoever came up with the bright idea to invent the single currency. By eliminating the need to 'get rid of your foreign' on the last day of the holiday, this clever person has caused a partial collapse of the souvenir shop industry. I no longer have to say 'Oh you SHOULDN'T have!!' when I am forced to display an ornamental plate of a Greek house in my kitchen.

 

To summarise:

 

1. Postcards were worse than Facebook for blagging about your fab life/holiday etc  

2. Those T-Shirts they sell in Turkey aren't real designer labels

3. If you holiday in the UK, you are a boring tool who probably goes on trips to Black Pudding factories and empathises with Roy Cropper's character in Corrie.

Nightstops from Hell!

Greetings my fellow passengers! Glad to see some of you have stayed on for the ride and you've got your sick bags at the ready, welcome on board to the new ones and to the ones who have stopped reading, good riddance. I'm sick of you prudes who moan about my writing, the clue is in the title that the blog is called The Mile High Confessional and my nom de plume is Flight Deck Floozie, that should give it away that it's not about flipping European Air Passenger Rights. I'm not that fuckwit Simon Calder.

Anyway, today's blog post is about what happens when we clock off for the day and go to our hotels. 'Oh your lifestyle sounds so glamorous!' say all those who've never flown before. I tell you what, some of you readers sound as if your lives are boring as frig but you're not half lucky as when you finish your shift at the chicken plucking factory/ call centre/ claiming benefits for your depression, you don't have to eat your dinner, breakfast and spend the night with the boring twunts you work with. There are two ways a nightstop can go- fabulous with a load of fit PILFs and fun, party animal cabin crew, or mind numbingly awful, with jobsworth crew who feel guilty stealing coke off the plane (the drink I mean, not beak) and pilots who seem to have come dressed as Luxembourg in a 1980s Eurovision with the sense of humour to match.

When I spotted a night in Paris on my roster, I got rather excited and calculated complex equations in my head as to the probability of having a load of PILFs for the eye candy and my best pals on the nightstop with me. Also, I researched into what other airlines may possibly use my hotel in the hope that there'd be an orgy with a load of Gulf Air swarthy PILFs or maybe the opportunity to make party with a big-nosed, circumnavigated Turkish Airlines cadet First Officer. Nah, scrap that. Airline Cougar told me those cadets are cadets in more ways than one and if they use an autopilot to land the plane, then the lucky lady will obviously have to finish herself off. Talk about First Officer's Mess!

Anyway, D-day drew near and my mate decided to pull a sickie, so bang went my party partner. The top drawer PILFs had been rostered on to other duties. Who the hell was I going to spend one night in Paris with? I checked my roster in the morning. Oh no. Oh please god no. No no no no nooooooo! I was rostered with a bunch of the most miserable twats on the face of this earth. This was the days before I Phones, Facebook and many other great antisocial gadgets too. This was 2005. A period when conversation was to be expected. I needed an action plan.

The group of people I was with were known as penny pinching tight arses. If they saw me, they'd try and blag a drink off me. The worst thing was, we were to passenger down and then work the next day. I hope to god the people in rostering weren't expecting us to sit together on the plane like some sort of jolly outing? I hated that stuff at school, I'm not doing it now. Work and private life should be kept separate, unless you've pulled a fit PILF that is.

My strategy was to hide in places where tight arses tend not to go. I checked in 3 hours before departure for my flight, knowing that tight arses check in last minute as to avoid spending money in rip off joint airport caffs. I promptly made my way to the most expensive airport caff, armed with a load of mags, my Nokia brick for some hardcore Snake playing and that new invention of the time, the MP3 player. Bitte nicht fucking storen, my vibes were giving off hopefully. As I was in my civvies, I hoped I was harder to spot but those pesky gits spotted me when I was at the gate listening to Sugababes Push the Button. 'FLIGHT DECK FLOOZIE! WE'RE HEEEERE!' They shouted. Weird, they usually ignore me. I felt like Shirley Valentine when Dougie and Jeannette asked her to sit with them. Reluctantly, I walked over to an evening of boredom, the pitying glances of the whole of gate 59 burning into my back. My 'friends' were already bitching about the price of milk or some other boring topic that people under 60 shouldn't be interested in, I carried on listening to Sugababes and pretended to sleep. It got worse. A member of ground staff offered to preboard us all and let us sit together! How utterly generous! Think Floozie, think. How am I going to get out of this situation. Then it came to me- the runs! I started clutching my stomach and said I need a seat by the bog as I was going to be needing it and not to join the mile high club. This deterred them for the duration of the flight. Phew. I was still within earshot of them though and all they were doing was moaning about the French and asking every 10 minutes for a drink or an item of free food. I sincerely hope that the sadistic looking purser on the flight had shot his man milk into the complimentary caffe latte. Saying that, my colleagues would probably have relished it as it was free. A money shot indeed.

After touching down in the city of love, I thought I was being clever as I only took hand luggage and they checked in a massive case each full of food to save them buying stuff in Paree. No such luck. I was hoping to intercept them but the bus was an hourly service so it meant waiting for the bus with them. I bagged that seat next to the bus driver that nobody ever wants to sit on (plus he was a bit of alright, swarthy and North African mmmm what a BILF). I managed to get off the bus first and check in, not revealing my room number to them thank God. The worst was yet to come though, breakfast the next morning. The number of tools had multiplied overnight and there was about 10 of them round the table, discussing money, politics and which nationalities they hated. I was hoping for a cosy table for 1 with my pot of coffee and Take A Break mag but instead, I was stuck in a low budget re-enactment of the four powers having that conference in Potsdam at the beginning of the Cold War. 'Hey Floozie, that is a big handbag' one of them said to me. Wow, how nice of him to compliment me, I thought. 'Is there any room in it to put these bread rolls in as I don't want to buy lunch' he said. WTF. OMG. Floozie was speechless for once. Why the hell was he being a tight arse and nicking from the breakfast buffet and more importantly, why did he want to shove his stinking contraband Brie sarnies into my expensive bag? I told him to do one in the most polite way possible. I had to work with 3 of them that day, so I turned up at the airport 2 hours early so I didn't have to bus it with them. After 2 hours of eyeing up French businessmen tanked up on coffee, I sailed through what could have been an awful day.

The following day, they had invited me to the mall with them. Can these people not take the hint or did they want to torture me? I got up at the crack of dawn and went to the mall myself, again to avoid bussing it with them, and hid in the most expensive, designer shops and caffs as I knew they'd be homing in on the Euro Shop or cheap and nasty fast food joints, eating the stolen goods from breakfast on a bench somewhere like a bunch of bag heads. Success.

The measures that you have to go to sometimes to avoid the workplace arsehole can be exhausting, but if you are successful, it is a rewarding feeling. All you smug gits who do 9-5 jobs have it lucky, air crew have to do breakfast, lunch and dinner with horrid colleagues at times.

So, to summarise:

1. Every workplace has twats
2. Your friendly cabin crew probably hate each other's guts
3. If you're a businessman in the Paris area, you have probably been mentally undressed by me