Classic video footage showing a Pan Am Boeing 707 arriving at JFK. Notice the 2-3 seating layout of the cabin.
Found via @AvWeekBenet
Southwest Airlines is known for having special state livery airplanes. Yesterday, they showed off their newest one: Florida One. The plane will be taking a trip around Florida, showing off the new livery. The newest livery is one of 13 other special liveries already in the Southwest fleet: Arizona One, California One, Illinois One, Lone Star One (Texas), Nevada One, New Mexico One, Maryland One, three Shamu aircraft (SeaWorld), Silver One (celebrating Southwest’s 25th anniversary), Triple Crown One (recognizing Southwest’s top rankings for ontime performance, baggage handling, and Customer satisfaction), and Slam Dunk One (tribute to our NBA partnership).
Florida One required 32 people at the Boeing Company working three shifts over the course of eight days to paint. Over 46 gallons of paint and 16 different colors were used.
You can check out some photos of Florida One on Southwest’s blog.
UPDATE: Even more photos can be found on Southwest’s blog.
Yay! The graduation photo of the newbie class I sat in on!
Have I bored you all with my flight attendant training blogs yet? 🙂 I hope not. I have enjoyed writing them and I hope you have enjoyed reading them. I know I learned quite a bit and have changed my perspective on what flight attendants do. They frek’n rock!
On this final post I just wanted to talk about some thoughts I had about the experience that didn’t fit into one of the other blogs.
I was originally set up to sit in on two classes for the first day, but the trainers did a great job of moving me around to a bunch of different sessions. The cool part was most students didn’t know who I was until the second day, which meant they weren’t behaving just for me.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to slide down their practice slide during my visit!
The classes and personnel there were all very professional, but also fun. There were some very serious topics discussed, but everyone was able to have a good time and laugh. I personally think building a positive relationship with your co-workers and the company you work for is very vital in the training process. By the end of the second day I really felt part of the AirTran flight attendant team.
During my life, I have had to sit through way too many boring PowerPoint presentations, but luckily the ones at the training were far from boring. I flew a red-eye from Seattle to Atlanta, got three hours of sleep and went right to the training facility, but I didn’t yawn once since it was interactive (I was yawning the second day, not from lack of interest, but lack of sleep catching up with me).
AirTran's training center in Atlanta, GA.
As I showed you, on earlier blogs, the training is very hands on. You aren’t just sitting in the classroom, but out in the mock setups where flight attendants learn how to open/close doors, use evacuation slides, practice safety procedures, try out their in-flight service and much more.
Something I never thought about were the different aircraft types airlines have. Unlike a pilot, a flight attendant is not assigned to a certain aircraft type. This means that flight attendants must know how every plane in the field works. Even though AirTran has an “All Boeing Fleet,” The Boeing 717 started its life as a McDonald Douglas MD-95 and is not very similar to the Boeing 737-700. It can’t be easy being a flight attendants on larger airlines like Delta or American that have to know the systems of many different aircraft types.
That's me. Telling the passengers to sit down and shuddup because we are leaving!
The overall training for new flight attendants lasts about four weeks and is quite intense. About five of the new students that I met were flight attendants from other airlines and wanted to change employers since they heard good things about AirTran. One of the trainees, Alan (Hi Alan!), said this was the best training he had since PanAm. That is a huge compliment since PanAm was known for their amazing training.
Last Friday, April 16th, all the newbie flight attendants I met graduated and will start completing test flights to hone their skills before being released into the wild. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF YOU! Now they will ride on some flights to be tested and then end up on the bottom of the seniority list for which flights they have.
A nice AirTran Boeing 737-700 drawing in the trainer's break room.
Seniority seems to be a pretty big deal in the airline business. The higher up you are, the more benefits you get. Flight attendants will be flying 20 days of the month and off for ten. Those at the bottom of the food chain (ie newbie hires) get last dibs on what days and flights they will fly on. It was interesting that to determine seniority for those in the class, BINGO balls were used.
I went into the training, not quite sure what I was going to get out of it. I think there are a lot of misconceptions of what flight attendants do and the glamor of traveling the world and just serving drinks. I hope this blog series has let you see how complex and important the flight attendant’s job really is. Almost every flight attendant I spoke with says it is the best job in the world and they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. To me, that is pretty cool.
A special thanks to AirTran and all the wonderful people that made this blog series possible!
A Day In The Life Of…A Training Flight Attendant
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | ALL | PHOTOS
I have updated my Flickr account with some additional photos taken with my iPhone and the flight attendant’s graduation picture.
Photo taken when I put Alaska's guarantee to the test!
Airline fees are not very unique anymore. It takes a bit more than a fee change or new fee to motivate me enough to write a blog on it (like charging for carry-ons). Why does Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air get a blog on fees?
Not because they are raising some fees (1st checked bag from $15 to $20) or that they are lowering others (2nd checked back from $25 to $20, 3rd from $50 to $20), but because they are making their from plane-to-you bag guarantee even better.
Previously if you checked a bag with Alaska or Horizon, they guaranteed your bag would reach the baggage carousel 25 minutes or less from the time your airplane made it to the jetway. Now that they are raising the prices for some passengers, they are improving the guarantee to only 20 minutes.
If your bag doesn’t make it in 20minutes, you can either get $20 off your next flight or 2000 miles (I vote take the miles). A while back I put their guarantee to the test on a flight from Seattle to Phoenix and my bag made it in just over 15 minutes.
Yea, fees are annoying, but they aren’t going away. At least one airline gives you something extra with your baggage fees!
AirTran Boeing 737-700 that I flew from ATL to MKE
What better way to test out the things I learned than flying home via AirTran?
After my second day sitting in on classes, I left the AirTran training center and headed straight to Atlanta International Airport (ATL) for my AirTran flight to Milwaukee (MKE), then back home to Seattle (SEA).
Yesterday I looked at how some airlines provide very little space for passengers, but on this trip, I was lucky enough to test out AirTran’s business class (which has a seat pitch of 37″ — ah yeah!). In Business Class, the seats are bigger, you have more room, free drinks and premium snacks. Being up front also gave me the opportunity to watch what the flight attendants were doing and see if they were doing everything I just learned about earlier that week.
On the flight home, I had a totally different perspective than I had on my previous flights. Like most frequent fliers, I feel like I know how everything works and I don’t need to pay attention. This time, I couldn’t help but notice how the flight attendants did the safety announcements and prepped for the flight.
Once all the passengers boarded, I could see the flight attendants close the front door and arm the slides. When I heard the call, “cross check, all call,” this time I finally knew what it meant. Each flight attendant double checks to make sure both doors in the front and back have the slides armed and then call back, “cross check complete.” This is also done after reaching the gate to make sure the slides are dis-armed.
Once we hit that 10,000 foot mark, it was time to get on to the internet. AirTran and GoGo In-flight were offering WiFi for 20% off, so how could I refuse? Cost me less than $10 and let me have access to the internet on both legs of my flight.
Every AirTran flight has WiFi, which is awesome!
The flight from ATL and MKE went very fast. I caught up on some blogging (what better way to be inspired than blogging at altitude). The leg was uneventful and I enjoyed my free adult beverage and premium snacks. I ended up not having a talkative neighbor and that was ok with me.
When leaving ATL we were told that those of us continuing on to SEA would stay on the same aircraft. Fine by me, I could just surf the internet while waiting. Once we landed, I sat on the plane while others de-boarded around me. One of the flight attendants was standing in front of me thanking the passengers and I started talking to her about how many flights she had left. She told me this was her last flight for her and the plane. I thought she might have just been messing around with me. Turns out, she wasn’t.
With the extra room, my netbook easily bit on the tray and in Business Class you get free drinks!
While in flight AirTran changed plans and now people flying to Seattle would have to change planes. Between that decision being made and us landing at MKE, no one had informed the passengers. Not a big deal, this just meant I got to watch a totally different AirTran crew at work.
In my hurry to get to my next plane, I accidentally left my carry-on bag in the overhead bin. While waiting in the jetway an AirTran pilot who was dead-heading (not flying but commuting from one place to another) asked if I needed help and went to get my bag (since he had the spiffy uniform on, people got out of his way). That was very nice of him, since it was not expected.
There were probably about ten of us who had to change planes who were on our way to Seattle. Most of the others were upset that we weren’t told and found this to be a huge inconvenience. One guy even mentioned that AirTran was definitely going to hear from him about this incident. Really? I mean this stuff happens. The airline business is very complex and planes have to be moved around all the time. We all got our same seats, and left right on time and got to stretch our legs. Not a big deal to me.
I spent two days training with AirTran flight attendants, I flew two flights with two different flight crews from ATL to SEA…how did they do, you ask? Well it depends. Did they do every little thing they were originally trained to do? No, but that seems okay. How many of us do everything exactly the same way we are trained at our job? If I was just a normal passenger, not knowing all the specifics, I would be very impressed.
For example, in Business Class, trash is supposed to be taken away on a tray (vs the economy class uses bags) and bags were used on one of the flights. Do you think anyone came close to noticing that? No. Did passengers get less for their money because their trash was picked up in a bag? I surely hope not.
One of the things I enjoy most about flying on AirTran is that I know that on every plane, every flight will have internet and XFM radio. That is something that’s important to me. AirTran believes consistency is important on every flight; not just with the amenities available, but the type of service that passengers receive. On a flight that takes me 10 hours to get from one side of the country to another, I sure am willing to pay more knowing I will have Wi-Fi: something you can’t always get with others airlines.
A Day In The Life Of…A Training Flight Attendant
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | ALL | PHOTOS