Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Turn off Electronic Equipment

Overheard onboard today:

P.A. Announcement: "Once again, all electronic equipment must now be turned off so that we can close the door for pushback. All cell phones, PDA's, computers, personal stereos, and games must now be turned off. We will let you know when you can use them once again."

Fly Girl: (Repeating an earlier request) "Ma'am, I need you to turn off your cell phone now; we're ready to depart."

Passenger: "Oh, I didn't think that you meant that I had to."

Fly Girl: "Yes, ma'am, everyone needs to turn off all electronic equipment."

Fly Girl: (What I was really thinking) Of course YOU don't have to turn it off, we meant everyone else. Because you're special and no one minds taking a delay so that you can finish up your conversation.

Sometimes it's hard to be the good Fly Girl.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's like kindergarten with some passengers, isn't it? There's always one who won't follow the class rules.

I'm just waiting for the day when I'm going to be forced to say: "You act like a child, I'll treat you like a child," and then I confiscate their toy.

Anonymous said...

Let me guess... they gave you the "moment-of-silence" where their eyes were full of WTF? and then they complied, but certainly with that arrogant "Your-not-my-boss" type of cliche` sassiness.

In the words of my mother:
"Been there, done that!"

Anonymous said...

Boy can I relate... on our boarding PA's we had to change it to "all electronic devices INCLUDING mobile (cell) phones"...

I regularly have people flip out the phone on stepping down onto the tarmac, I'm like 'Excuse me sir, the phone has to go off now." Of course they don't 'hear' me...

Once a flight was running late, we were waiting for a late pax. As I was walking him to the plane he whippped out the phone and starts talking. I'm telling him to put it off, he won't listen. I stop walking so he has to stop too but won't switch it off. Of course I can't grab it from him, he's about 6'6'' and huuuuge. Eventually the Capt comes down the stairs, says 'Phone off means you mate, let's go, we're already late!" and grabs the guy's phone, walks back up the steps and goes into the FD, leaving phone Dude open mouthed!!!

Capt tells the FA to tell the guy that he can have his phone back in the building at the other end. HAHAHA!!!

Anonymous said...

I am so tired of cell phones! Just my 2 cents but it shoud be required that they are turned off and stowed inside carry-on luggage before entering the jetway! I have seen people walk on board, stand in the middle of the plane and argue with the person on the other end while a line of passanger's wait behind him. Noone is interested in your phone conversation! Noone on this earth is that important that they have to have their cell phone on inside an airplane!

Anonymous said...

Surely "everyone" doesn't apply to me, or "all" mean MY cell phone, does it?
;)

Anonymous said...

My fav. airline story regarding passengers who thought they were above the rest comes from Readers' Digest and I don't know if it's true or not but I got a kick anyway from it. It goes something like this:

An angry passenger goes up to the ticketing agent, cutting off everyone in line and demands that he get on the plane and in a first class seat. The agent politely informed him that he would have to wait his turn and he angrily declared "Do you have any idea who I am?!" The agent dutifully picked up the PA microphone and announced, "We have a passenger who does not know who he is, if anyone can help him figure it out, please come to gate X?"

Surely you've all heard it before, but I laugh every time I think of it.

Anonymous said...

Cell phones aside, I think asking passengers to shut off electronics like cd players is pretty dumb. It doesn't affect the navigation systems because the systems run on higher frequencies than the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by a PSP or a cd player. With the all science, the airlines are still ignorant. Shame.

Fly Girl said...

Joy: In the U.S. it doesn't matter whether it affects the navigation systems or not, it's a federal regulations that it must be turned off. It doesn't matter what I think, I have to ensure compliance with the regulation. I hate being the electronics police.

Anonymous said...

I think airlines err on the side of caution, as it hasn't been proven that they do not affect it AT ALL...

Plus, we all want 100% of the passenger's attention so they can see the safety demo (yeah, right!!)

Plus, if they need an evacuation, the dude asleep with his Bose noise-cancelling headphones and the iPod on won't react as quickly....! =P

Anonymous said...

Spoken wisely Tray! And Pacificdude I love that story! hehehehe...makes me laugh every time.

The other day my flight was delayed by 30 min or so b/c of weather...which in the big scheme of things is really not that bad when departing from ORD...Anyways, I had this lady get on and first thing out of her mouth when I said hello was..."I really wish this flight wasn't delayed!" I (without hesitation) let her know that I would give God the message. LOL! Sometimes I think you need to tell them like it is...as omis said, 'it's like kindergarten with some passengers!'