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If your husband/wife is going to cheat, they're going to cheat! It doesn't matter what they do for a living. I was a flight attendant for 7 years, I ended up marrying the pilot I dated during that time. The stereotypical womanizing pilot sleeping around with the hussy flight attendants is as long gone as 36 hour overnights in ORY. Of the many pilots and flight attendants I knew personally, I only know of two who have messed around where they shouldn't have, and that was just their personality anyway, they would have acted that way if they were a doctor or salesman or anything else.
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So true.
The popular media and "Joe Six Pack" (the flying public) have this impression of that a three day trip is nothing but an extended happy hour, sitting around the Four Seasons hotel pool with flight attendants in bikinis and the pilots with two flight attendants on each arm.
Sheesh, where do I sign up for that!
They see a three-day trip as simply shuttling between 5-star hotels on the French Riviera, Manhattan or Miami. Ordering the seafood ceviche and carpaccio of beef on the private beach in Spain, while reading up on your investments in the Wall Street Journal while sipping on a snifter of Courvosier.
When you attempt to explain that you change cabin crews about every other leg, generally lay over in seperate hotels, or even if they do, normally prefer not to even hang out together, it falls on deaf ears.
Or when you try to explain that your average trip isn't 18-hours in Paris, more or less a 9-hour layover in Baton Rouge at the freeway-side Holiday Inn, a 10-hour layover in Ontario by the airport and a wonderful 11-hour layover in the Airport Holiday Inn-Newark with a spectacular view of a prison recreation yard, they think you're exaggerating.
And the worst part of the stigma is that it makes some of your non-airline friends jealous and it makes your spouse suspicious which, I think, adds on to the prevalence of "AIDS-Airline Induced Divorce Syndrome".
I know a guy who is a captain and also is in "The Reserves" (I won't say which branch just in case he happens to read this). And admittedly, this is only his half of the story, but it goes like this.
His wife has friends like I mentioned above. The type that ask, "How can you stand your husband being on the road with all of those flight attendants?" -- When in reality, we rarely lay over with flight attendants. And if we do, generally, they'll head off to Target to purchase some junk for their kids, the captain takes a long nap and I'll go wander around town looking for a newspaper and a quiet park bench.
I've known this guy for a few years, but he's pretty much straight and narrow, working two jobs to afford a nice living for his wife and children, and is the first guy to whip out pictures of his kids and family and talk for hours about them in flight. Definitely a family man as far as I can see.
Anyway, he's doing a deployment back east and gets a hotel off of one of those discount travel websites. He had to arrange for his own hotel because apparently, his assistant dropped the ball and didn't reserve enough rooms. Basically he's staying in the middle of nowhere by the military base and didn't bother to invite his wife because there'd be nothing to do besides watch television and watch the cars whiz by on the freeway during the military exercises.
While he was doing his expense reports, she notices the receipt and it shows "Two Queen Beds-Standard Room" and gets pissed.
"Why did you need two beds? Who were you with?"
Apparently, his wives friends are known to always ask her, "How do you know he's always doing military reserve stuff when he's away?" Plus the everpresent, "We're working two jobs to make ends meet, you're a stay at home mom and your husband is making $500,000,000 per year to drink coffee and drink foo-foo drinks on the beach with 100 amorous flight attendants" from her friends. If you're married to a pilot, you know what I'm talking about.
A few weeks later, he's on a deployment to [A base in the desert] for an exercise and invites his wife to come along because the other officers in his unit are bring their wives too and are staying at a hotel [near a major attraction].
Nope, too busy, no interest. Obviously still upset about the "suspicious" hotel receipt. Apparently, her friends have her convinced that he's meeting with someone because they saw this television movie once where...
After the exercise is over, he heads out to dinner with the other officers and their wives and his cellular telephone rings.
He picks it up and apparently all his wife hears is the officer's wives laughing and talking in the background.
The connection goes dead.
He calls back and the line is busy.
Anyway, when he returns home from the deployment, he's served with divorce papers and the locks are changed on the house.
Gotta love movies like Lifetime Network's "Frequent Flyer" and "Catch Me If You Can" to preserve the stereotype.
