Here's my stereotype... The best FA's are the ones that worked another career for a significant amount of time before becoming FAs. I think they have a better appreciation of the reality of the job.

Or as George Carlin said: "I never had a 10, but one night I had five 2's!"

^^^^ spot on.

I think that goes for all of us. I mean my time working at the Gasoline and Match factory really helps me appreciate the safety of Deltas Birmingham Alabama mountainous terrain training program. :D

Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer became a truck driver only to find out the truckers use an autopilot to drive their trucks. At some point a trucker decides he's had enough of the autotrucker and says to a bunch of other truckers:

Trucker 4: You know boys, I've been thinking. Maybe it's time we ditched the high tech gizmos and went back to driving like our daddies did.

Trucker 5: Drunk?

Trucker 4: No, no, no. Using our hands and our wits. Yeah, sure, it's hard work, and it's lonely as hell, but it has meaning and dignity. [long pause from the other men]

Trucker 3: Nah. Let's just find some other scam.


I've always wanted someone to say we ought to go back to flying like we used to, just so I can say "Drunk?"

Shirley you cant be serious?

Maybe it's time we ditched the high tech gizmos and went back to flying like our daddies did.

Drunk?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/73/17...cd4bf071a0.jpg

we once had the autopilot MEL'd on the 727 and hand flew from DTW -Vegas-MSP-MotorCity one fun summers day, back at a supplemental that shall remain nameless, flying by hand at non RVSM altitudes just like Daddy did, fortunately there was no mountain wave over the Rockies or we would have been requesting block altitudes, it ended up being a very good day with nary an ASAP report being required, the 727 being a total joy to fly in all regimes except takeoff out of hot,and slightly high LAS,where we routinely rotated way far down runway 25R , shouting fore as we sagged upward and accelerated over that golf course , and not relaxing till that wing morphed clean and we had 250 kts on the ticker, and 10k in the bank beneath us.

well if rotating at the far end of the runway is flying like daddy did, the 88 on a 50 derate flaps 5 is keeping the faith.

Just flew a trip with a guy that insisted on flying the 757 like its a 727...and that Delta's procedures should have been frozen in time the day he got hired. Him..."Do you mind if we do it the way we used to do it?" Me..."I don't know what that means."