The Secret Life Of Flight Attendants

From dubiously crusty blankets to mid-air engine fires: Lizzie Pook speaks to flight attendants (past and present) to reveal what really happens at 35000 feet

‘They were three glasses of Champagne down before we’d even taken off. By the time we’d done the safety presentation and given them a snack, they were hammered. First Class is usually the least rowdy cabin; but this couple was so drunk, they took off all their clothes and ran naked down the aisles.’ This, according to Mandy Smith, an ex-Virgin Atlantic flight attendant with 10 years in the air under her belt, is pretty standard for a long-haul flight. Just another day in the office, in fact.

You see, as you sit there, idly mulling over where to jet off to for your next holiday, entire casts of flight attendants are currently pointing out the emergency exits to passengers who haven’t nodded off yet. And here’s the twist: not only are they judging your fellow passengers, but they have seen it all.

Because it’s not just our dietary willpower that goes out of the window the minute the cabin doors close – it’s apparently our inhibitions and, on occasion, human decency, too. Women and men like Smith (pictured throughout), who wrote a whistle-blowing book, Cabin Fever, about her time in the air, get to see some hilarious – and sometimes horrific – things in the line of duty.

You don’t have to take their word for it. Perhaps it’s the heady mixture of confined space, pressurised cabin air and the mere vicinity of so many miniature bottles of gin in one place that does it, but an emerging body of research now suggests that flying can do strange things to our mind, alter our mood and change how our senses work. Some studies even show that relatively mild levels of hypoxia (aka the deficiency in oxygen that we can experience on flights) can alter our ability to think clearly.