Out of the Blue: Outburst signals return to normalcy

At 5:30 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 13, less than 24 hours after American Airlines Flight 587 went down in Queens, New York, flight crew members based at Miami International Airport prepared for another day of flying. Dressed in blue uniforms, they parked their cars in the employee lot, boarded the shuttle bus and rode to the airport in silence.

As the bus lurched to a halt in front of Terminal A, many of the pilots and flight attendants rose in unison, hefted their company-issue roll-aboard bags from the luggage rack, and stepped off the vehicle.

But one attendant fell out of formation before reaching the shuttle's door. She lingered in front of the luggage rack, peering at the cluster of remaining bags, apparently attempting to find her own. She looked left, right, then left again.

I stood with a group of colleagues on the asphalt, waiting for this attendant. The bus idled, its other passengers moving slightly in their seats. Had someone mistakenly taken her roll-aboard? Had she forgotten to transfer the bag from her car to the bus?

She just stood there, staring. Suddenly, her hands cupped her face and she nearly burst into tears.

Normally, I might have hurried toward the terminal. I was in civilian clothes and headed for a Los Angeles vacation, and I wanted to stake out my place on the employee stand-by list.

But since Sept. 11, the bond among crew members has strengthened. Many of us, especially those at United and American, have attended employee memorial services and cried in the arms of colleagues we hardly knew.

We have endured workplace tragedies beyond our nightmares, then returned to face a flying public that is occasionally infuriated and infuriating. So even though I was out of uniform and in a hurry, I felt compelled to wait, along with uniformed crew members, for the colleague who could not find her bag.

The woman standing beside me explained our colleague's behavior: "This is her first trip since the attacks," she said, just as the troubled flight attendant yanked a bag from the heap; it had been beneath her nose all along. "She's a little nervous."

The woman in question stumbled from the bus and joined us. Her hair was frazzled, there were dark circles beneath her eyes and even her cheeks appeared swollen.

With the previous day's crash, no doubt she had begun to cry again, as she presumably did often during the preceding two months. Now here she was, swollen face and all, ready to rejoin the troops.

I'm not sure how she fared on her trip, but I hope her passengers were empathetic. I hope they didn't go ballistic when she forgot to deliver that second can of Coke, or when she spilled the cup of coffee, or when she apologized for the nonexistent meal service.

And I hope she reacted in kind. Passengers have had to put up with long lines, flight delays and jittery emotions of their own.

But in the weeks after the terrorist attacks, some passengers displayed uncommon acts of kindness. "God bless you," one woman told a friend of mine working a flight. "Thank you for working today," said another passenger.

People smiled as if seeing our faces for the first time. A spirit of togetherness floated through the cabins. Condolences, handshakes, assurances of back-up in the event of in-flight turmoil -- these offerings have been common.

But as the skies return to "normalcy," so have verbal transgressions.

During a recent flight, a woman told me she had ordered a special dietary meal. I checked her name against those on the meal list. There were three names and for them, in turn, one kosher meal, one low-sodium meal, and a fruit platter. None of these was designated for this passenger.

When I delivered the news -- but before I could offer an option -- the passenger erupted. "This sucks!" she said, glaring at me. Before I could ask if she had changed her flight within 48 hours prior to departure (which would have canceled the meal order), before I could find out whether her travel agent was to have placed the order (sometimes they forget), before I could offer to assemble a plate of vegetables from the first-class galley, she had turned heads by shouting, "This sucks!"

I wanted to say, "No, ma'am: This doesn't suck. Terrorism sucks. Memorial services suck. The furlough of 100,000 airline employees sucks. Here we are, flying safely from point A to point B, the seat adjacent to you is unoccupied, turbulence is mercifully absent, and the plane is scheduled to arrive ahead of schedule. But because your special meal is a no-show (and while everyone else's special order is onboard), you're ready to have a conniption."

But I didn't say any of this.

Not because it would have been inappropriate. But because at that moment I realized that maybe, in some strange way, the passenger's outburst was a good thing. Fear spawns repression and silence. But as confidence returns to the airways, so return the voices of complaint.

- Elliott Hester has been a flight attendant for 16 years.

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