Cabin crew and pilots are put up in hotels when they work long-haul routes. There are plenty of juicy tales about what crew get up to while they’re away together. One flight attendant has revealed an intriguing insight into how pilots behave. Mandy Smith, who worked as cabin crew for Virgin Atlantic, explained the “habits” of pilots in her book Cabin Fever.
The Virgin flight attendant revealed that most of the airline’s pilots enjoyed an indulgent yet selfish lifestyle while away.
Mandy explained what it was like to go out for dinner with pilots most of the time.
She wrote that it was “unusual behaviour for a pilot” to buy drinks for others.
“Our pilots hardly ever bought the crew drinks,” Mandy wrote in Cabin Fever.
“They also had a nasty habit of ordering four-hundred-pound bottles of wine at dinner.
“They’d keep [it] up their end of the table, guzzle [it] and then expect us all to chip in when the bill arrived.”
Mandy goes on to recount an exciting romance she enjoyed with another pilot whom she met during a stopover in Japan.
Indeed, she is far from alone in enjoying affairs with pilots while away on travels.
One former flight attendant told Stuff.co.nz: “If you think about stories in your own workplace, when do scandals often happen? Work trips.
“Well, our job is all one big work trip, so as you would expect, it does happen.”
However, there is a downside to this if flight attendants have partners back home.
Flight attendant Heather Poole revealed in her book Cruising Attitude that pilots are the ultimate threat for significant others.
“We’re away from home for days at a time, and a lot of that time is spent at hotels with colleagues of the opposite sex,” she said.
“There aren’t a lot of people who can handle that. This is especially true for those involved before their flight attendant career began.
“It’s just too difficult for most men to deal with. Nine times out of ten, imaginations get the best of those left on the ground.”
Heather added: “They think that all pilots look like Hugh Jackman instead of Danny DeVito, and that all the passengers seated in first class are trying to lure us onto their private islands with promises of champagne and caviar.”