Hanging out with the FAs

Do you hang out with the flight attendants on overnights?

  • Frequently

    Votes: 12 12.6%

  • Never

    Votes: 26 27.4%

  • Sometimes, it depends

    Votes: 57 60.0%
  • Total voters
    95
Rarely. Extremely different maturity levels even when we’re the same age and I don’t feel like babysitting.

At least half my FOs are uuhhhhh.....socially awkward lets say and I really would rather just eat dinner in peace. The percentage of weird little sheltered nerds in this business is way too high.
 
Most of the time I do my own thing. I see most of our standard overnights as an opportunity to get a work out in, order something good on uber eats and catch up on sleep. For the better, downtown overnights, I'll usually go out and do something depending on timing. Sometimes with the crew, sometimes alone...it just depends who I'm with. A good crew? I'm almost always good for a meal or beverage. Capt Happy who wants to talk about work at a chain restaurant bar? No thanks.
 
I'm not good at small talk for extended periods of time and I'm generally not a fan of trying to do idle chat in loud locales like some bars and basically all clubs, and honestly, as a few others have mentioned, if I just spent 10 hours with you at work all day, once I'm off the clock, that's my time, unless we happen to really hit it off. Plus, most of the overnights where I work are in locales without much interesting to do. I have nothing against having a drink, but I don't do it very often. Is there a cool hike nearby? A cheap kayak or canoe rental on the nearby lake? Free museum? That's more my pace.

Bidding PM trips with late finishes after everything is closed relieves me of some of the obligation to have to politely decline an invitation to go out.
 
web265 said:
At fifty mumble mumble years old, with most of our crews, I'm afraid I'd come off as the creepy old guy so I don't bother. LOL
Click to expand...

Don't worry about this. People with experience outside of aviation are usually the best ones to grab a beer with. I've met crewmembers who have worked for the Department of State, owned restaurants, and served full military careers. Their stories are far, far better than the "one time at Riddle" tales that some pilots like to tell.
 
When I was in DTW (one of our most senior bases)I would go out with the FA’s all the time. Since I’ve been out in NYC I’ve only been out with the crew once and one of the FA’s were MSP (Jurassic Park) based. I always thought senior crews would slam click but it’s been the junior NYC crews. The “senior mammas” are hilarious too. I guess after you get so old you just say what you want. Maybe i just relate more to older women :confused:. If nobody wants to hang out I’m usually doing black guy stuff like @Soul Brotha' ans @Derg or sleeping like it’s going out of style.
 
JordanD said:
The first one was a legit repayment and the rest were because I forgot.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I forgot too. I was too busy baby sitting her drunk ass captain being tailed by security and throwing chips in the air like confetti.

Anyway, on this subject, I made friends with pilots at a few international airlines working in the ramp tower and meet up with them and their crews fairly often. The Chinese airlines seem to operate like US Airlines, where the cabin crew and pilots seem to do their own thing, which for cabin crew usually means partying and shopping while the pilots just seem to go to dinner together then go back to the hotel. However, the European airlines seem pretty big on everyone hanging out. A good friend of mine is a captain at a French long haul LCC, and while the flight attendants are mostly 21-26 in age, the pilots are all in their 30s-60s and still hang out with them. They rent cars and go on big road trips, they go clubbing, they go bar hopping, they go on various tours, and they often take over the rec room at their hotel and have a liquor and food pot luck until 3 or 4AM when they don't go out. They fly a Paris to SFO to Tahiti route and back, spending 2-3 solid days in each stop along the way, and they always seem to be doing really cool stuff on every lay over. Island hopping in Tahiti, renting boats, ect. When I've brought up what my friends at major US airlines do on over-nights, they always say something along the lines of "The US Airlines fly to so many cool places, I can't imagine just staying in the hotel like a hermit and not pooling money with the cabin crew to do cool stuff".

It is funny that after 100+ times easy meeting up with friends at US airlines on their SFO overnights, I've only made friends with a couple of their F/Os or Captains and never so much as got a flight attendant on social media. Meanwhile, cabin crew from European airlines are always letting me know when they're in town independent of the pilots I met them through. I guess Europe just has more of a "live life" culture where the F/As are looked at as part of the team, while US crews often seem to look at things as possibly punitive and think a lot more into extra-curricular lay over activities. I've never heard my friends at airlines outside the US(even at places like China Eastern and EVA where they don't hang out with the cabin crew much) worry that the F/As might get them in trouble, if anything, they just think the young girls are annoying. But in the US(outside the regionals, anyway), the common consensus is F/As WILL get you in trouble, so avoid them. Sad to see it, but I'm sure a lot had to happen to get to this point.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Yeah, I forgot too. I was too busy baby sitting her drunk ass captain being tailed by security and throwing chips in the air like confetti.

Anyway, on this subject, I made friends with pilots at a few international airlines working in the ramp tower and meet up with them and their crews fairly often. The Chinese airlines seem to operate like US Airlines, where the cabin crew and pilots seem to do their own thing, which for cabin crew usually means partying and shopping while the pilots just seem to go to dinner together then go back to the hotel. However, the European airlines seem pretty big on everyone hanging out. A good friend of mine is a captain at a French long haul LCC, and while the flight attendants are mostly 21-26 in age, the pilots are all in their 30s-60s and still hang out with them. They rent cars and go on big road trips, they go clubbing, they go bar hopping, they go on various tours, and they often take over the rec room at their hotel and have a liquor and food pot luck until 3 or 4AM when they don't go out. They fly a Paris to SFO to Tahiti route and back, spending 2-3 solid days in each stop along the way, and they always seem to be doing really cool stuff on every lay over. Island hopping in Tahiti, renting boats, ect. When I've brought up what my friends at major US airlines do on over-nights, they always say something along the lines of "The US Airlines fly to so many cool places, I can't imagine just staying in the hotel like a hermit and not pooling money with the cabin crew to do cool stuff".

It is funny that after 100+ times easy meeting up with friends at US airlines on their SFO overnights, I've only made friends with a couple of their F/Os or Captains and never so much as got a flight attendant on social media. Meanwhile, cabin crew from European airlines are always letting me know when they're in town independent of the pilots I met them through. I guess Europe just has more of a "live life" culture where the F/As are looked at as part of the team, while US crews often seem to look at things as possibly punitive and think a lot more into extra-curricular lay over activities. I've never heard my friends at airlines outside the US(even at places like China Eastern and EVA where they don't hang out with the cabin crew much) worry that the F/As might get them in trouble, if anything, they just think the young girls are annoying. But in the US(outside the regionals, anyway), the common consensus is F/As WILL get you in trouble, so avoid them. Sad to see it, but I'm sure a lot had to happen to get to this point.
Click to expand...
It also depends on layover length. I know if I were sitting for 2-3 days, without reserve, I'd be having fun also. When I'm on a 2 hour call out though, it limits what I can do.
 
Last edited:
Screaming_Emu said:
I was flying with a guy who was in my new hire class. We were talking cars, so it came up. He said “Subaru makes solid cars, but then you can be mistaken for a liberal.”

I told him that I was one, after that he only gave me one word answers if it wasn’t related to operating the plane. Friggin tool bag.
Click to expand...

Am indifferent towards Suburaus in general as a vehicle, but their dog commercials are extremely creative, very well made, and quite funny.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
I was flying with a guy who was in my new hire class. We were talking cars, so it came up. He said “Subaru makes solid cars, but then you can be mistaken for a liberal.”

I told him that I was one, after that he only gave me one word answers if it wasn’t related to operating the plane. Friggin tool bag.
Click to expand...

You told him you were a Subaru? No wonder he was weird to you after that!

;-)
 
Stone Cold said:
It also depends on layover length. I know if I were sitting for 2-3 days, without reserve, I'd be having fun also. When I'm on a 2 hour call out though, it limits what I can do.
Click to expand...
Of course, I'm not expecting that most people with a 24ish hour lay over after and before a long haul flight would want to do anything but sleep/eat.
 
One thing that I was surprised about with our industry was that I thought I could talk sports with mostly anyone. Except in our industry like 90% of the people could care less. That's why I love flying with the Aussies.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top