00:00We have this misconception that we just provide like coke and like snacks throughout the flight,
00:04but we are professionals. Like we're trained to evacuate you under 90 seconds.
00:07When scary things happen, we don't have time to feel things. We have time to act on things.
00:12That's the main thing is emergency landings and things that go wrong on the airplane.
00:16We train for this all the time. Chances are I'm not going to use it.
00:19And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, I need to use it now.
00:25So about nine months ago, I was working a flight to Frankfurt.
00:29It was actually a flight from Berlin, Germany to New York, JFK.
00:32I was in the aft galley and I heard a bunch of call bells starting to go off.
00:37And we saw all the call bells were being pressed in this one particular spot of the plane.
00:41About four hours into the flight, a girl came up to me and she was like,
00:45hey, um, this older gentleman next to me, he's like out. Like he's like unconscious.
00:51And as I'm doing service, I'm picking up trays. I noticed this girl that's unconscious.
00:55And I only know this because her palm is inside the plate filled with pasta.
01:00A passenger had a seizure.
01:03He had taken sleeping pills and then decided it was a good idea to have a couple glasses of wine.
01:08He was completely unresponsive. He did have a pulse and was still breathing.
01:12So of course, at that moment, training kicks in.
01:14And the first thing is to advise all the crew so that we're all on the same page.
01:18Also, we have to let the cockpit know.
01:20We've gotten a lot of phone calls from flight attendants just saying there's somebody in seat four.
01:26We're keeping an eye on and I want to let you know.
01:29Flight attendants have the training to handle almost any situation in the air,
01:32which is incredible for us.
01:34We pulled out the first aid kit and they were able to take her vitals.
01:37My first instinct as we're trained, of course, is to page for medical personnel.
01:41Ladies and gentlemen, do we have any medical professionals on board?
01:44It's always best if there's somebody who's professional and takes over.
01:48Luckily, we did have a doctor on board that came and was able to assist us.
01:53Thank God there was actually a registered nurse beside her.
01:56When they call the doctor, you know, over the loudspeaker and say,
01:59is there a doctor on board? Is there anybody that can help?
02:01When they make that call, they're also calling us and we're calling a medical professional on the ground.
02:06Anytime there's like a passenger that has any medical emergency,
02:09we have like a phone that we can actually call from the air.
02:12And then a doctor from the ground picks up and we kind of guide them what's happening, what's going on.
02:16Even if we're halfway across the Atlantic, we can call somebody who knows exactly what is on our
02:21airplane and how to utilize it at 35,000 feet in the air.
02:26The doctor was able to get our patient back to consciousness.
02:30He was giving him medicine.
02:31The registered nurse took over and she was able to take her pulse and everything was fine.
02:36Apparently, what we were told from the father was that she hadn't slept in a long time.
02:40Also, the fact that you're high in altitude, you know, maybe lack of water.
02:45All these things kind of piled up together.
02:47Then this older man just gets up and walks to the lavatory like nothing ever happened.
02:53Our doctor finally gets back to us.
02:55Yeah, you're gonna divert to Boston.
02:57And we were like, okay, well, he's totally fine now.
03:00No, you're diverting to Boston.
03:02The captain has the final authority of what happens on the flight.
03:05But the doctor will advise whether that is necessary or not.
03:09Now, if the doctor says it is necessary to divert, the captain will usually agree.
03:13When they met the plane, she was taken off the plane and then she was okay in the end,
03:17which is all that matters.
03:19When we land, it's like about 3 a.m. local time.
03:22Everyone's flight is canceled.
03:23Our trip is canceled.
03:24We're not going to Germany anymore.
03:25We're downstairs waiting on the shuttle and a passenger comes up to us and is like,
03:29yeah, so that passenger that we diverted for, he just lugged his own baggage off the baggage carousel.
03:36The medical issues are fairly common.
03:38Somebody passing out from being dehydrated.
03:41People come to the plane anxious, you know, and their blood pressure drops.
03:44But we have lost people on board also.
03:48It doesn't happen that often, but it does happen.
03:51It was an elderly woman flying with her sister.
03:53I believe they were going to Paris and she suddenly passed.
03:58We did try to revive CPR and all of that, call a doctor.
04:02I think we were halfway over the ocean and she did pass, but we were still going to Paris.
04:08There is a saying at our job that nobody ever dies on board.
04:12You don't want anyone to die on board, officially die on board, because they can quarantine the airplane.
04:18They need to bring on the coroner.
04:20They can't disturb the things.
04:22People would have to be interviewed.
04:24We don't tell people.
04:25We don't announce it.
04:26We don't say anything to the other customers about that.
04:28If they announced we have a death on board, then it could be a really complication of everybody being withheld.
04:35Sometimes you have to put the oxygen mask on them, cover them up with a blanket,
04:40make them look like they're sleeping, and you finish the flight.
04:45We try to give them dignity and we put a blanket on them.
04:48People in the back of the plane, when they pass by them, they wouldn't really know what was going on,
04:52because we'd kind of mask it that good.
04:54As soon as you get on the ground, then the medics take over and they deal with that,
04:58but it's very traumatizing for the crew.
05:00That's another thing you never forget.
05:04I was purser on a flight.
05:06We were going to Dallas.
05:08The captain called me up.
05:09I need to see you in the cockpit, which we know is uh-oh.
05:12I was taking off out of Vail, Colorado.
05:15Twenty-three minutes into that flight, we lost pressurization.
05:18I was actually going to Hong Kong, and we, on takeoff, got a bird strike.
05:22I didn't know it at the time that a bird had hit the engine, but I started feeling foggy.
05:27We know that that is a sign of a slow decompression.
05:29My eyes started glazing over.
05:31I grabbed my oxygen bottle, and I look at the flight attendant across from me,
05:34and I said, get your oxygen bottle, because I'm feeling something that doesn't feel right.
05:38I went up to the cockpit, and he started to tell us that the landing gear was not going up.
05:43The drag was draining all of our fuel.
05:45He said, and now we're not sure if it's intact, so we don't know how we're going to land,
05:50but we have to land soon.
05:52You've got to prepare the cabin for an emergency landing.
05:54So we put our oxygen masks on completely calmly, and all the customers are just looking at us
05:59with their eyes wide, like, what is happening?
06:01All the oxygen masks dropped.
06:02The oxygen masks dropped from the cabin ceiling.
06:04We had to perform an emergency descent and take the airplane into the nearest suitable airport.
06:09We could hear a couple prayers happening, some phone calls being made,
06:14but definitely some shrieks and some screams.
06:16The one little caveat we had was that we had five or six unaccompanied minors on board.
06:22Small children, as young as six.
06:24So now we have to find people that are ready to take control of the children, reassign them seats.
06:29We only have 15 minutes to land.
06:31Meanwhile, everybody's on oxygen.
06:32I'm freaking out, and we ended up having to circle for about 20 minutes,
06:37because you have to dump fuel, because you can't land a big aircraft full of fuel.
06:42So for that entire 20 minutes, I'm in my jump seat trying to calmly present myself.
06:48And at the time, I had babies at home. It was crazy.
06:51I remember thinking, as I sat on my jump seat in my emergency landing position,
06:56oh my god, I didn't even think of my son.
06:58I was a single parent at the time and had a three-year-old at home.
07:01It just shocked me that I didn't think of him.
07:03I was so busy thinking of what I needed to do to get, you know, everybody off the plane safely.
07:08The rapid descent only took us a couple minutes to get down from 30,000 feet
07:12to our landing airport, and they were very much grateful when their feet touched the ground.
07:16When we did touch down, the landing gear held.
07:19It did all work out, and it was a good ending.
07:23We landed the plane safely, and everything was fine.
07:26The bird didn't make it.
07:27Flight training is very much a rigid, regimented process and covers a lot, right?
07:33And I would say most of what flight training is, is to teach you what to do when things don't
07:39go right.
07:40I've done hundreds and hundreds of flights prior to that where nothing happened.
07:43You never know when it's going to be your day to have to put all of your training into place.
07:48Sometimes we have to compartmentalize.
07:50When scary things happen like this, we have to be in the moment.
07:52We don't have time to feel things. We have time to act on things.
07:56When something happens, our training, it kicks in immediately.
07:59The training was really worth it.
08:00We present ourselves in a certain way to the customer, and they don't always see what's really going on.
08:05But for the most part, we're just like you.
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