Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Heather Poole had some great stories, and I’ll never look at flight attendants in quite the same way again.
Description via the Harper Collins website:
Flying the not-so-friendly skies…
In her more than fifteen years as an airline flight attendant, Heather Poole has seen it all. She’s witnessed all manner of bad behavior at 35,000 feet and knows what it takes for a traveler to become the most hated passenger onboard. She’s slept in flight attendant crashpads in “Crew Gardens,” Queens—sharing small bedrooms crammed with bunk beds with a parade of attractive women who come and go at all hours, prompting suspicious neighbors to jump to the very worst conclusions. She’s watched passengers and coworkers alike escorted off the planes by police. She can tell you why it’s a bad idea to fall for a pilot but can be a very good one (in her case) to date a business-class passenger. Heather knows everything about flying in a post-9/11 world—and she knows what goes on behind the scenes, things the passengers would never dream.
This book was a mixture of a behind the scenes look at the logistics of how a flight functions (I’m a sucker for that sort of thing), and personal stories from a young woman who splits her time between flying the world and living in an apartment with many other women.
I admit, I really had never thought about what an airplane looks like from the flight attendants viewpoint– how their schedules and responsibilities work, what the requirements are for life as a flight attendant. It isn’t something that would work for me, but I can see why it would appeal, why some people would put up with the challenges such a life presents.
The funniest bits come from dealing with the challenges of life as a flight attendant, rather than the time spent in flight. Certainly, there were some good in-the-air stories, and the author’s sense of humor permeates the book.
For the first half of the book, I really, really enjoyed hanging out with Heather Poole, and listening to her stories. I thought I’d love to have her work a flight I was on, that I’d enjoy talking to her. She just seemed so friendly!
As the book went on, she got a little cattier, and although I’m certain she would be entirely professional if she worked my flight, I’m far less certain we’d find anything to chat about.
That didn’t make her stories any less entertaining, and I continued to enjoy reading about celebrities, people (particularly pilots) she dated, and other flight attendants.
I’d recommend this as a fun read, with the possibility of learning a little along the way.
I received Cruising Attitude for review from William Morrow Paperbacks. Thank you!
