Without question, the most popular blog articles I’ve
written are the ones that include funny stories about crazy people or
embarrassing moments encountered on airplanes.
Flight attendants are a wealth of such anecdotes and fortunately, my
friend Ange is not only a great flight attendant, but quite the raconteur as well!
Before I let her tell you a couple of stories, I need to
make one clarification. Anyone over 40
must certainly remember Lou
Ferrigno.
he’d never heard of Lou. I said, "Mr.
Ferrigno was a professional body builder who played television’s Incredible
Hulk! He was hard of hearing as a child
and his cruel classmates called him 'Deaf Louie.' I think he overcame his deafness, eventually." Jeremy answered and asked, "Was that back in
the black and white TV days?" *sigh* I
almost had to throw Jeremy through a plate-glass window, Hulk style. Anyway, Lou is prominently featured in one of
Ange’s stories today. Let’s grab a mug
of cocoa and have a comfy seat by the fire while Ange tells us a story or two,
shall we?
First I need to explain our flight attendant positions so I can
refer to them during my stories. We have 3 positions; The “A” flight attendant
is the one that stands in the front and greets passengers and makes the
announcements, and she serves the front of the plane. The “B” flight attendant serves the back of
the plane, and the “C” serves the middle of the plane and is responsible for
standing in the exit row during boarding to brief the passengers who sit there
about the emergency door, how it works, etc.
A few months ago I was working as B and the C came to back of the
plane and said "I think Arnold Schwarzenneger is on the plane!" I
said, “I'm shocked they wouldn't brief us if the governor was coming on the
plane, and you would think there would be some kind of security etc.."
She said, “Well he is a really big actor, maybe it was The Hulk!” I said, “Cool, the old one or the new
one?” “The television one,” she said.
“Wow! Lou Ferrigno! Hey isn't he deaf?
He can't sit in the emergency exit row!”
She looked at me with HUGE eyes and said, "YOU TELL HIM THAT!! ha!!
Obviously a deaf passenger can't sit in the emergency exit rows
because they need to hear the audible emergency commands during an evacuation. It’s a Federal Requirement. In this case Lou is no longer deaf. I don't know if he has cochlear implants or
by what miracle now allows him to hear and speak, but he was a wonderful man
with a sweet wife and I felt very safe with the Hulk sitting in the emergency
exit row! I figured he could probably
rip off the wall if we needed him to!
On another occasion, I had a very early morning flight from
Nashville to San Diego. It’s a long
flight and only 16 passengers were aboard the plane. Of course most of the
people sat down and immediately fell asleep. One of
the passengers took out this huge book that appeared to be a medical journal. I walked by and asked, "So, doing a
little light reading for the road, huh?" He proceeded to tell me that he was starting
to run marathons, and he was looking for ways to replace his potassium. He said he didn't really like bananas. They have little packets that marathon runners
squeeze into their mouths as they run that have a kind of “pudding” consistency
to them that weren't to appealing to him either.
So I stayed and talked to him for a while, while he looked for
better ways to fortify himself, and I asked how one goes about training for a
marathon etc... We got on to the subject of what he did for a living and he
said he was a singer. I went to college
in Nashville and one of my dearest friends is a Singer/Songwriter named Sam
Mullins and he said he knew him. We chatted for awhile longer about Nashville
and places we both loved and then I went on with my duties. When he was walking
off the plane, I said "Oh, I forgot to ask your name so I can tell Sam
that I met you." He said "Tracy Byrd!" (the famous country
singer). I said, "I probably should
have known that! I love your song, ‘'Dont Take Her She's All I Got!" and he said, "I'm
glad you didn't! It was like a day off"
EXTRA: If
you have questions for Ken regarding business travel, hotels, airplanes, etc,
please call 1-877-49-EXPERT. Your
questions will be recorded and sent to him.
Many of Ken’s blogs come from your questions and observations, so don’t
hesitate to ask!
