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If I was ever to leave the safe confines of my home office and become an air hostess, I would really rather work in economy class than first class.

Don’t even try to convince me to mind the wild antics of those high-flyers on private jets while serving their every whim…

That’s because dealing with the eccentric demands of some rich passengers, many of which are bordering on if not fully-fledged harassment, seems to be pretty brutal.

Occupational hazards come in all forms when you’re working in the air.

Now more than ever, with instances of violence and “air rage” becoming more frequent, definitely compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, a recent survey found that nearly 85% of flight attendants face regular abuse on flights.

That comes from VICE, who also spoke to a couple of female flight attendants on commercial airlines. Using their first names for safety reasons, they revealed the obnoxious behaviour of their first-class clients.

Let’s start with Prakriti, a flight attendant currently working for one of Qatar Airways’ premier carriers.

In her first week on her dream job, she had her first unfortunate first-class interaction with “a particularly obnoxious, champagne-sipping octogenarian businessman”:

“The bizarre aspect of this was that he wanted me to pour the champagne right into his mouth,” she said.

“They had trained us on how to behave with such requests, but my childhood fear of intimidating authority figures got in the way and I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there dumbfounded.”

Taking a sabbatical from flying is Steffi, who is based in Mumbai, India.

She was once asked for her hand in marriage by a “Canadian lady on my flight, who seemed very friendly,” but who developed a little obsession with Kingham, or just the idea of her dropping everything to marry her son:

What followed was five hours of sheer awkwardness until the flight landed in Quebec.

“We usually have this unsaid rule that if we encounter a weird passenger who is targeting us, someone else from the crew replaces us when it comes to interacting with them,” said Steffi, who avoided going anywhere near the matchmaking passenger for the rest of the flight. She had to bear with the lady staring at her for the rest of the flight, though.

She also recalls the experience of one of the junior members in her cabin crew:

“We usually have a standard policy to not serve more than two drinks to passengers, though depending on how they handle it, we can even serve more,” she said.

“In this particular case, the gentleman was clearly buzzed and kept asking for more. The junior flight attendant in my crew then offered him a sandwich to calm him down. He took it and then just aggressively flung it on her face.”

They were only one hour away from Bangkok at the time and managed to avoid any further trouble up until landing, but the aggressive sandwich throwing stuck with the flight attendant for a long time.

Maithili had to handle a privileged mother and her emotional manipulation:

“I was once on a flight to Dubai, and in the business class was a woman with three kids under the age of ten, all of whom seemed tired and cranky,” she said, asking to be referred to only by her first name.

…She literally asked if I or even the pilot knew any magic tricks so her kids would not disturb her while she slept. When we turned her offer down, she flew into a rage and threw a fit, which ended up with all her kids crying and us scrambling to soothe them.”

Meanwhile, Jiang Quan, who was a flight attendant for 11 years before also going on a sabbatical, faced some eyeballing harassment from a lascivious man who “wanted to marry” her legs.

Otherwise, a lot of the flight attendants can recall one moment they were asked by a wealthy first-classer to be their sugar baby.

This was made all the more disturbing for one flight attendant who had to break up with her boyfriend after he couldn’t understand why she was so uncomfortable when his favourite cricket player asked to be her sugar daddy.

Life can be tough a few miles up.

[source:vice]