Do you have what it takes to become a flight attendant?

Washington Post

11 hours ago

ATLANTA — The worst-case scenarios kept coming: lavatory fires, turbulence that propelled oxygen masks from the ceiling, baby CPR. By the time we got to ditching — aviation terminology for an emergency water landing — my nerves were wrecked.
But this was a normal day at the Delta Air Lines flight attendant training center, where current and future crew members prepare for disaster scenarios you hope to never encounter while flying.
I've spent years reporting on the world of flight attendants: how they dealt with the rise of unruly passengers during and after the pandemic, how they've faced low pay and homelessness. But I'd never seen the extent of what it takes to become one, so I flew to Atlanta with video producer Monica Rodman to learn about their training firsthand. What we saw at Delta shattered all notions of the 'waitress in the sky' stereotype. Instead, we found something more akin to basic training: physical, technical and designed to save lives. Flight attendant training isn't about service; it's about safety, which has been amplified after recent high-profile aviation accidents.
Inside a sprawling brick corporate campus near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, trainees — freshly accepted from a cutthroat application process — spend seven weeks learning everything from pre-takeoff safety demonstrations to self-defense tactics; they commit the mechanics of Boeing doors to memory and run drills on handling medical emergencies.
Very little time is spent on in-flight service, the part of the job with which they're most associated — that is, if they get the job. Before they can join Delta's fleet, they first have to pass their final tests.
From what we saw, that's a lot harder than you'd think.
Our day started with an outfit change. A team of Delta representatives — communications people, program managers and flight attendant instructors — serving as tour guides escorted us into the maze of building hallways. We wound up in a room full of jackets.
Delta trainees are given branded navy zip-ups that feel both sporty and professional, like a British soccer coach or a Silicon Valley exec on casual Friday. The jacket means a lot; Delta's flight attendant program is said to be the most difficult to get into among the domestic airlines, allegedly harder than getting into an Ivy League school.
When I asked what Delta looks for in a candidate, Rachel McCarthy, the vice president of in-flight service for Atlanta operations, said it wants people who are resilient and adaptable, people who can take care of their mental and physical well-being while adapting to the unique lifestyle.
'You're going to work unusual hours; it's not 9 to 5,' she said. 'You might have early mornings, late nights, overnight flights when you're looking at some of our global routes.'
The job description also states that applicants must be able to sit in an assigned jump seat with seat belt and shoulder harness fastened, and to open aircraft doors weighing 40 to 60 pounds. Applicants must be at least 21, have a high school diploma or high school equivalency, and be able to speak, read and write English fluently.
Outfitted with a new (loaner) training jacket and a red 'earning my wings' lanyard, I followed our guides to a room that would fit in an episode of 'America's Next Top Model.' It had rows of high tables furnished with well-lit makeup mirrors and basic beauty supplies. Here, flight attendants learn about Delta's 'appearance requirements' — which are a far cry from the sexist early days of the industry when airlines marketed their young, thin crew members more like in-flight amenities than safety professionals.
Today's dress code stresses grooming basics over beauty standards and is more inclusive of varying backgrounds. Makeup is not required but can be worn by any gender. So-called extreme eyelashes and visible tattoos are not allowed. A nose piercing is okay, but not ear gauges. Jewelry cannot interfere with safety. That means no dangling hoop earrings.
Trelawney Bundrage, a flight attendant instructor who's been with Delta for 29 years, assessed our appearances to see whether we met the requirements. Like many instructors on our tour, she wore a perfect red lip.
Mo's androgynous, bleach-blond mop would fly; hair may be dyed, so long as it's a natural hue. If your hair is longer than shoulder-length, it must be pulled back away from the eyes. And if your hair is up but still hangs longer than mid-back, it must be pinned. My loose hairdo, pinned back with a claw clip, would need to be tightened up.
'We would talk about these, we call them romantic tendrils,' Bundrage said, pointing out the loose strands of hair tucked behind my ears.
Had I been in training, I would have learned to smooth my tendrils and frizz with hair products and to try a bun for more refined look.
When a Delta plane retires, it's chopped into pieces to create 30- to 40-foot 'trainers' to serve as realistic classrooms. They can drop oxygen masks and make sound effects, shake, rise and fall to simulate turbulence. Mechanics also extract specific parts for isolated training; for example, there's a corridor of different aircraft door models for students to master opening, closing and securing. Mo and I took turns heaving them open; they're heavier and more complicated than they look.
Inside an Airbus A350 trainer, instructor Janae Bride, who's been with Delta 12 years, explained the importance of knowing your 'galley geography.' Planes are full of hidden compartments for efficient storage, and flight attendants must memorize their many secrets so 'they're able to find out where items are located without opening the doors and having to slam them,' Bride said.
It's not just beverage carts and service items hiding in the walls.
There's a seemingly endless bounty of emergency supplies, like flashlights and first-aid kits and exotic contraptions like protective breathing equipment, which looks like an astronaut's helmet from a low-budget 1960s sci-fi movie. It's yellow and maybe Mylar, designed to give oxygen in an emergency. It's also awkward to put on and incredibly loud when activated. Your flight attendant was trained to deploy the pseudo-scuba gear in the event of a fire in the lavatory or extinguishing toxic gases.
I put one on in the 'smoke and fire' training center, an all-metal replica of a plane in an auxiliary building where trainees can learn to put out flaming lavatory waste bins and portable chargers. My head was spinning as I chased various smoking disasters. Mark Fields, an instructor with 31 years with the airline, shouted commands.
These instructions are designed to be short and clear, delivered with a sense of urgency but also calm, all of which is more helpful to digest in an emergency whether they're directing crew or passengers. Such protocols are critical to achieving the Federal Aviation Administration's rule that flight attendants must be able to evacuate an entire plane in 90 seconds.
Mo ran through command-heavy drills, shouting at invisible passengers: Bend over! Stay down! Bend over! Stay down! The lines would be stuck in our heads like earworms well into the next day.
These commands and procedures must become muscle memory. To prove it, new students must maintain a 90 percent average on all 'knowledge assessments' and successfully complete all hands-on evaluations within three attempts throughout the program.
Mo crouched alongside Alana Calhoun, an instructor with more than a decade of experience, to execute CPR on dummies to the beat of Lady Gaga's 2008 hit 'Poker Face,' which has the correct cadence for the lifesaving procedure.
Calhoun is the platonic ideal of a flight attendant: chipper, helpful, attentive. She didn't just greet colleagues as we passed; she beamed at them.
So it did not surprise us when Calhoun mentioned that she worked at Disney World before pivoting to aviation. Before that, she worked at the children's restaurant Chuck E. Cheese as the titular mascot himself. It was good training for working flights; she reminded us that Chuck E. Cheese serves alcohol.
Flight attendants also face unruly, inebriated customers, although Calhoun says the landscape is different from when the issue peaked after the pandemic. These days, she's noticed passengers seem more aware and step in to help when they notice trouble. Still, flight attendants are trained in self-defense and de-escalation.
With CPR dummies resting at Calhoun's feet, we took a break from touring so Mo and I could ask the instructors our lingering questions.
Are they afraid of flying after the accidents of late? (All said no.) Will dressing up get you upgraded on a flight? (No.)
Can they date passengers? (Yes, but there's a policy against sharing the location of the layover hotel with strangers to protect the safety of the rest of the crew.)
What are the most-ordered drinks? (Sparkling water on the West Coast, Coke in the South, tomato juice in Florida, coffee in the Caribbean.) How often do they have to stop people from attempting to join the 'Mile High Club'? (Very rarely; some have never encountered the problem.) What do they think of passengers giving them gifts? 'It means the world,' Calhoun said, particularly when you're working over the holidays and someone gives a $5 Starbucks gift card or a thank-you note.
Maybe my arm would come out its socket, or maybe I'd pull the man helping me out of the raft and into the water. By the time I could wrap my mind around the possible outcomes of this last drill, my body was hurtling to safety; I flopped in belly first, like a fish.
We were ending the day with a ditching drill. I'd changed into a swimsuit and a Delta long-sleeve shirt, along with my slacks, and boarded a trainer plane installed alongside an indoor pool with a group of giddy students. They'd just passed their final exams and were officially flight attendants. Once we were buckled in our seats, sound effects simulated a problem — the plane was going down. Life jackets on, we followed commands from Fields on when to jump out of the door into the 80-degree water.
Pulling the tab to inflate my vest was a life highlight after seeing hundreds of safety demonstrations over my traveling career.
But in the pool, we had to join forces to get into a tall life raft. I felt like I'd sneaked into a Navy SEALs boot camp, attempting to hoist up my fellow evacuees while treading water. We all made it in and spent the next few minutes erecting a canopy to protect us from the hypothetical elements we'd meet floating in the ocean. People moved quickly in the awkward, slippery setting, and then we were done, smiling like kids under a parachute.
We had made it through a day of flight attendant school, not with honors — just with a new appreciation for the people who do it for real.