The New Crowd

Now that I have transferred bases, I have to get used to a whole new 'crowd' of passengers, (and crew, but that will be a different post) . The UK passengers in economy seemed to be either school groups wearing matching sweatshirts/Tshirts, elderly tour groups,English families going to the US to visit Disney and shop, college graduates backpacking abroad for the first time or passengers travelling to either the middle east or Africa. Toss in a few random soldiers , a Hasidic Jewish family, a grungy band ending their less than successful European tour and that is our economy cabin on flights to /from London.

Oh how different a Frankfurt flight is.  Yes we have the soldiers, economy is FULL of US military and their dependants travelling back and forth, that much is similar. The 'color' has moved from the middle east to Eastern Europe. My German is used on the Birkenstock wearing Germans travelling to their holiday homes in Florida, but really Romanian or Ukrainian would be more useful. I swear a Gypsy woman was asleep at door 3 right in front of the jumpseat on my last overnight flight. I tripped over the humongous bare feet poking out from the many skirts she seemed to be wearing. I would have made her move but was afraid she would put a curse on me or try to clean me with a dirty rag and a bottle of 'Windex'. 

She was not the horror of the trip, it was the unaccompanied minor . This poor child was sent on an overnight flight back to his German mother wearing flip flops on his feet, NOTHING to occupy him, much less a toothbrush. The fact he apparently had ADD only added to the fun. He was so high maintenance we literally had to assign 1 crew member to watch him full time, 1 guy even gave up his crew break to keep him under control. He was slipperier than an eel, appearing in first class seemingly out of nowhere. Then under a seat, then in a bathroom flushing various things down the toilet. Even the female pilot tried to entertain him with a coloring book she had purchased for her child, but that only slowed him down for about 37 seconds.  Naturally he fell asleep just before landing.

This in a nutshell my friends, is why I work First Class.....