by Mandy Smith
Just after I’d said that, a massive plume of smoke billowed from one of the wing engines on the right side. More screams filled the cabin. “You call that ‘normal’?” yelled a bespectacled man, getting out of his seat. At the front of the cabin a woman sitting in an aisle seat started sobbing uncontrollably. I went over to her and crouched by her side. Her head was in her hands and her thin legs were pulled tautly together and trembling.
“It’s okay, madam,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about. In a few hours we’ll be back on the ground.”
She let her hands fall into her lap. Her face was rigid and pale, like a bleached wood carving. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m not normally like this. But when the captain mentioned an engine fire it panicked me. I’ve got two young children at home.”
“And you’ll be back with them in no time.”
She blew her nose and nodded. “I hope so.”
“Listen,” I added. “I’m the best person to speak to about engine fires. I used to work in the engineering department so I know a lot about engines and how they work. We don’t actually need four engines; three is more than enough. The fire has gone out now – the captain has turned that engine off, so it’s no longer a problem.”
“But what about the smoke?”
“That was probably just the captain testing the engine again, It’s all switched off now by the looks of it, and we’re quite safe to land with three engines. Most cross-Atlantic flights only have two engines on the aircraft anyway – but all of our Virgin planes have four, so we actually still have one spare.”
She began to relax and even managed a little laugh. “I feel rather silly. I watched that film Alive the other night, the one where the survivors of a plane crash eat each other’s flesh. I had visions of that happening to us. I’m so stupid – I know I shouldn’t have watched that film. I’m sorry for being such a wreck.”
“You’re not a wreck. It’s natural to feel scared,” I said, then, with another reassuring smile, added: “You should see the passengers down the back of the plane … it’s like a scene from the Airplane movie down there – there are nuns playing guitars and a queue of people slapping them ’n’ everything.”
She laughed again. “Ask them to play a number for me.”
Most passengers gradually began to accept the situation and calmed down … except for a handful, who started going on about compensation and complaining that their holidays had been ruined. The captain made another announcement reiterating that everything was under control, we had turned around and our landing at Gatwick was rescheduled for four hours’ time, and, for a while, things did return to normal, especially when we wheeled the drinks cart out.
It was approximately two hours prior to landing when we were hit with a second drama: turbulence … severe turbulence. It started while we were serving drinks – a few bumps and skips, nothing out of the ordinary for this part of the Atlantic. But the bumps rapidly became thumps and the aircraft started shuddering, dropping altitude, rising then dropping again. Drinks were being spilled, cups flying off trays. A few passengers started reaching for their sick bags. The seatbelt lights were illuminated and Stacey and I made our way back to the galley with the cart, crashing into seats as the plane jolted and trying to control the movements of the floating cart. By the time we reached the galley, the back of the plane was swinging erratically from side to side in a looping motion. We secured the cart in its stowage, grabbed some biohazard sacks and went back out to the cabin to clear up the debris. But now most of the passengers were vomiting – filling up bags, vomiting into the aisles and over each other like some sort of chain reaction – as the plane dropped at least a hundred feet, steadied itself then shook violently. People were handing us sick bags full of warm vomit, faces sage green and stark white, and we were slipping on the puke-splattered carpet. The smell was overwhelming: acrid and choking. Stacey stumbled to the galley and returned with all the spare sick bags we had, passing them round the cabin. Then the captain announced that this was only clear air turbulence – nothing to do with the technical difficulties we had experienced earlier, but that all crew were now to return to their jump seats.
I’d never experienced turbulence that brutal before – and it lasted for over an hour. We used every sick bag and every biohazard sack on board, and people were still throwing up even after the turbulence subsided. We made an emergency landing at Gatwick and were greeted by a fleet of screaming fire engines and ambulances. The passengers – exhausted, traumatised, their holiday outfits soiled and reeking of sick – were let off the plane with the assurance they’d be placed on the next available flight to Miami. We put the biohazard sacks, filled with regurgitated food, in the toilets, ready for the poor cleaners to deal with.
Stacey’s strip show at the start of the flight now seemed like a distant dream after eight hours of trauma. However, we soon bounced back to our flirty, fun-loving selves when the hunky firemen came on board – we were falling over ourselves to help them, and Stacey even managed to line up a date. “I’m impressed,” she said as we walked through the terminal building. “I can still pull even when I smell of sick.”
All crew on board that disastrous Miami-bound flight were expected to be ready for the same flight, on the same aircraft with the same passengers the very next day. I requested a few days off work after speaking to my manager, however. Not once during the engine fire flight had I panicked – I had automatically slipped into “Smiley Stewardess” mode. But the following day the impact had really hit me, and I was plagued by negative thoughts of what could have happened if the fire had not been contained. The blaze would then have spread to the wing and fuselage, which probably would have led to the plane ditching in the Atlantic. We had been extremely lucky.
An internal investigation was later launched after it emerged a hostess who had been working in another cabin had gone through the emergency door procedure with her passengers, demonstrating the brace position and telling them what to do if anything should happen to her. Nothing came of it, though, as she had basically thought she was just being thorough and hadn’t realised how much she had scared the living daylights out of her poor exit row passengers.
I seemed to be going through a phase of attracting dramas on board. When I returned to work, I found myself dealing with two incidents in as many weeks.
I had recently been promoted to purser and was flying from Shanghai, China, to the UK when the first episode occurred. It was night time, and I’d just returned to the galley from a break in the crew rest area. Most of the passengers were asleep but I noticed four call lights were illuminated in the galley, where a few of the national crew girls were sat on bar boxes nattering in Mandarin. When I asked them why they hadn’t answered the call bells, they just shrugged their shoulders. “I didn’t notice any calls,” said one of the girls, then turned back to her heated conversation.
“I guess I’ll answer them then,” I sighed.
It turned out one of the calls had been made by a Dutch gentleman in his late fifties who was suffering from chronic arrhythmia (an irregular heartbeat). When I got to his seat he was in severe pain, one hand clutching the chair, another pressed to his chest. He could barely breathe and couldn’t speak, but fortunately his wife was with him.
“Does he have any medical history?” I asked her as I felt for her husband’s pulse.
She handed me a huge folder full of graphs and medical notes dating back several years.
I could only just feel his pulse. It was faint and irregular.
I hurried them back to the galley and instructed the national crew to lay blankets on the galley floor. “One of those calls you ignored came from an extremely ill passenger,” I said. “We need to get the defib. Clear the galley. You two stay to help.”
I was fuming that they hadn’t answered the call bells. I put a message over the PA system requesting the mobile defibrillator be delivered to the L4 door and, with the help of the man’s wife, we slowly led him into the g
alley. We lay him down on the galley floor and I unbuttoned his shirt. His face was as grey as his beard and his eyes were beginning to glaze over. I gave him oxygen straight away and kept him in the galley to monitor him for the remainder of the flight. He was strapped to the defibrillator, and it kept saying, “no shock advised”. He never lost consciousness, but his heartbeat was so faint I could no longer feel it. His wife knelt by his side, stroking his soft grey hair. The flight service manager came back occasionally to check up on him, and we eventually moved him into Upper Class for a more comfortable lie-down. An ambulance greeted us at Heathrow on arrival, and the couple were extremely grateful for my help. They gave me their phone number in Shanghai, where they lived. “Any time you want to visit, just call,” they said.
The second incident I encountered was far less serious, yet far more dramatic. Mid flight – en route to Johannesburg – a rotund Indian woman, robed in a violet sari, came bursting into the galley, doubled over and groaning loudly. She pushed past me and grabbed hold of the counter, panting and sweating and clutching her stomach. She looked like a woman in labour.
“What’s the matter, madam?” I asked. “Is it your stomach? Can you show me where the pains are?”
She rubbed her hand over her lower stomach. “All over here,” she gasped.
It was obvious to me this woman was suffering from a severe case of trapped wind – a common ailment associated with flying. “Madam,” I said. “I know it doesn’t sound very ladylike, but I think you have trapped wind. The best thing you can do is kneel on all fours and try to break wind.”
I handed her a few Rennies from the first-aid kit and pulled the curtain across.
“Now,” I said calmly, “I’m going to leave you alone. This is your space – no one’s going to come in. You can do whatever you want in here, or if you would feel more comfortable, you could go to the toilet?” But as soon as I left the galley she come flying out again in a flash of violet and sequins, arms flailing, screaming at the top of her voice. By the time I reached her she was thumping the emergency exit door and pulling at the handle. “Madam, do not touch the door,” I warned, pulling her away from the exit and back into the galley.
“Hands off, hands off,” she yelled, lashing out with her elbows. It was like trying to restrain a pit-bull. At that point my flight service manager, Angela, came into the galley and together we managed to calm the woman down. But she was still complaining of pain in her midriff.
“I think it’s trapped wind,” I told Angela.
“Mmm, I’m not so sure – let’s do a PA call for a doctor.”
There were two doctors on board – male and female. The male doctor took one look at the woman, mouthed “trapped wind”, rolled his eyes and walked out of the galley. The female doctor, however, decided the woman must be suffering from something far worse and proceeded to stick a morphine drip into her arm. But in the doctor’s haste, she forgot to close the valve and a fountain of blood came spurting from the woman’s arm, prompting another screaming fit. We had to put on our biohazard aprons and protective masks and gloves in order to help the woman further as her blood sprayed everywhere.
Once the doctor had closed the valve and the morphine kicked in the woman began to mellow – in fact she looked blissfully happy. She returned to her seat but continually rang her call bell for the rest of the flight, asking for drinks and more Rennies, and making sure we’d arranged for an ambulance to meet her in Johannesburg.
There’s no doubt about it, trapped wind can be agonising – at worst it can feel as though your insides are about to explode – but this woman was a drama queen. She loved all the attention. There had been no need to give her morphine. The only thing this woman had needed to do to alleviate her pain was some good old crop dusting.
CHAPTER 14
DOWN UNDER
Brad: a stunning Australian Qantas pilot. Mid twenties, chiselled features, super-sexy body, a real little muscle muppet. He had the most amazing cock. It reminded me of a banana: long, but not agonisingly so, generous girth and a slight inwards curvature, which made it the perfect G-spot teaser. Orgasms with Brad were euphoric, explosive and earth-shattering. I couldn’t get enough of them.
I met Brad during my first trip to Narita, Japan, about two months after I separated from Jonathan. But our love affair didn’t start there. Although I found Brad incredibly attractive, I played hard to get, making him sweat. And believe me, it was worth it; when we finally did get together, the sex was dynamite and an eighteen-month global sexfest ensued.
I was singing our Virgin crew anthem “Like a Virgin” to a boisterous crowd of fellow crew members, at Narita’s karaoke bar, The Truck – a drinking hole contained in an old truck in the car park of the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel – when I first spotted Brad. He was standing with some of our crew, laughing as I hopped around the stage in my little denim shorts screaming suggestive lyrics with the microphone lead tangling round my legs. I was high as a kite after downing numerous shots of lemon hais – hence the reason for my karaoke performance – but sufficiently compos mentis to notice that this guy, with his oatmeal Bart Simpson–style hairdo, couldn’t take his eyes off me.
As I handed the mic over to the next singer, a Qantas stewardess who’d requested “I Will Survive”, one of our girls, Hayley, darted from the bar to greet me, flapping her hands in front of her chest. “Mandy, don’t look now but I’ve just met the sexiest guy,” she squealed. “He’s a Qantas pilot, Paul. He’s with his friend – also a pilot and equally as hot – who’s dying to meet you.”
“That’s just what I need … another pilot,” I said, looking directly at the guy with the Bart Simpson flat-top, whom I could only presume was the “hot” guy Hayley was referring to.
“But he’s gorgeous, Mandy. C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”
Before I could argue, Hayley had linked her arm through mine and was hustling me across the gluey floor to where the two men were standing.
“This is Mandy,” said Hayley, her eyes lingering on the taller, surfer dude–looking guy.
“Hi, I’m Brad,” said the man with the flat-top, extending his hand.
I shook it. “You were amazing up there, Mandy?” he added. He had that Aussie upward inflection going on, where every sentence sounds like a question.
“That’s me,” I said. “Karaoke queen. People pay good money to stop me … er I mean hear me sing back home.”
“Paul,” said the surfer dude, offering his hand. “Top effort, Mandy.”
Our conversation was then momentarily aborted by the demonic noise the Qantas girl was making. It sounded like she was being tortured, half-shouting, half-wailing her way through the song. Tall, with muscular Tina Turner-esque legs and pixie-cropped black hair, she cut an imposing figure as she hollered her way through the song, pacing back and forth and stabbing a dagger-like finger in the direction of an embarrassed guy perched on a bar stool. It got worse. As she reached her finale she started screaming, “I will fucking survive,” over and over again, tears cascading down her cheeks. Then she threw the microphone on the floor and crumpled to her knees, sobbing. Friends swarmed, helping the devastated Qantas girl to her feet and leading her out of the bar as she yelled, “You bastard, you bastard.”
I looked at Brad. “Well I think she outshone my performance,” I said.
He smiled. “That’s Miranda.”
“And that’s her ex, Kenny,” he nodded in the direction of the guy sitting on the bar stool. “Usual story: he cheated on her. She’s taken it badly.”
“No shit. That was some show.”
On the surface Brad seemed like a nice guy. He was happy to buy all the drinks, which is unusual behaviour for a pilot. Our pilots hardly ever bought the crew drinks. They also had a nasty habit of ordering four-hundred-pound bottles of wine at dinner, which they’d keep up their end of the table, guzzle, and then expect us all to chip in when the bill arrived. So Brad scored highly in the generosity department. He also told me that he was thir
ty-one and loved all sports, especially surfing. He said he lived in an “ace” apartment on the North Shore in Sydney.
“It’s totally awesome,” he said. “You should come and stay sometime.”
He was strikingly handsome: forget-me-not blue eyes – blue with a dash of chrome yellow around his pupils – and tanned skin. I could tell he was the type who enjoyed showing off his physique. He was wearing a tight white T-shirt that accentuated every ripped muscle in his upper body – a body that looked as though it was made solely for sex.
Brad was highly flirtatious, and so persistent. Within ten minutes he was asking for my phone number. “I’ve only just met you,” I said, “I’m not just handing over my phone number.”
Several lemon hais later, I found myself boarding the shuttle bus back to his hotel for a room party. I didn’t really want to go. I was feeling quite hammered and was dubious about getting involved with another pilot so soon after Jonathan. But Hayley was desperate to get her claws into Paul and had practically begged me to tag along for moral support. “We can just stay for a little while,” she said.
A “little while” turned into at least four more hours’ drinking with Qantas crew at Brad and Paul’s suite at the Radisson Hotel. It wasn’t the usual riotous room party – just a handful of people lounging around chatting. Paul – in a blatant attempt to woo Hayley – sat on the bed playing his guitar, singing along to songs such as “Stairway to Heaven”, a few Oasis numbers and an excruciatingly cringeworthy version of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight”. During one awkward moment, after his rendition of Damien Rice’s “The Blower’s Daughter”, Paul bowed his head and in a pained, breaking voice sang the final line before letting out a huge sigh that indicated his performance had left him emotionally drained. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. It was so obvious he was putting on an act to impress Hayley, which had worked. Paul’s serenading appeared to send her into a dreamy trance, her eyes transfixed on his long, strumming fingers.