Why treat airline crew badly when they could save your life?

Stories emerging from the Aeroflot accident in Moscow remind me how lucky we are that airline crews are so well trained. Whether you call them stewards and stewardesses, flight attendants or cabin crew, these people could save your life.

Despite this, people continue to treat cabin crew badly, as though they are the help or human chattel. Taking out your frustrations on the person responsible for providing you with a pleasant on board experience and who is responsible for you when it all goes pear shaped is just wrong.

Highly Trained Professionals

The first stewardesses had to be registered nurses and they were responsible for attending passengers. They also had to help with hauling luggage, fueling, and helping pilots push aircraft into hangars. While the job description has changed a little (when was the last time you saw someone pushing a plane into a hangar by hand at a major airport?), the focus on passenger safety remains paramount.

Aeroflot survivor Dmitry Khlebushkin puts it bluntly. “I’m alive only thanks to the stewardesses. The girls stood there in the smoke, it was dark, extremely hot, but they pulled people out and helped them get down the chutes”. Stewardess Tatyana Kasatkina confirmed to the BBC, “I was pushing passengers out. I grabbed each one by the collar, so that they wouldn’t delay the evacuation.” You can look at various accidents and see heroic actions from the crew. In 1982, an Air Florida jet crashed into the Potomac River in Washington DC in a snowstorm. Stewardess Kelly Duncan was one of six to emerge from the floating wreckage. She gave the only life jacket nearby to a seriously injured passenger, rather than use it herself. Others have died in the line of duty, such as stewardess Barbara Jane Harrison of BOAC flight 712 in 1968. During the evacuation, the escape slide burned away and she continued pushing people out the door, even as, according to witnesses, flames and smoke were licking around her face. Instead of saving herself, she returned to the cabin to try to save the four people left inside. All of them perished and she was posthumously awarded a George Cross for her heroism.

Overall Thoughts

Cabin crew have a varied role. They are caretakers, baby entertainers, agony aunts, food servers, first aid providers, oracles, bar tenders, overhead stowage tetris masters, and a whole lot more.

Next time you are having a bad day when flying, try not to take it out on your crew. They are at work and you are in their work space, so you should give them the same courtesy you would give someone when you’re visiting their office.

More importantly, the steward you were rude to might be the one responsible for saving your life later on in the flight, so think before you act. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Sergei Savostyanov/TASS via Russia Beyond.
Maxim Moiseyev image via BBC.
Kelly Duncan photo via WJLA.