Tricks on F/A's
 

Enough of all the seriousness, time for some fun.

Has anybody played any tricks on F/A's?
I've heard of pilots using ACARS as an ATM machine.
Or the good ole apple juice in an empty water bottle and handing it to the F/A. :p

Well there is the, "Go back and get me some flight line" joke. And of course, who can forget telling the FA we can't depart yet because we don't have enough "prop wash."

There was a crew (SWA maybe?) who called to an FA up to the flight deck...she arrived to find both pilots totally in the nude. I think they got fired when the FA didn't see the humor in it...

In the 90's when cabin air quality was a big concern to F/A's it was fun to play games with the new girls.

This would only work with girls that had been on the line for a few months or less (or just didn't catch on). Call to the back and let them know you need an air quality sample. Tell them to use 4 sick sacks and to capture air from forward, mid, and aft cabins. The 4th sick sack is for the random sample, they need to walk down the isle waiving a sick sack to capture that sample. It's really fun to watch if you are deadheading in the back.

The other fun stunt off the top of my head is asking the (young female) FAs if they want to peep through the "telescope" in the eyebrow window of a 727.

Of course I never did any of these things, just stories you hear on the line :D

In fact, I think they wrote a song about that.

Tricks
 

This could be a very dangerous thread, should it fall into the hands of flight attendants. They have been known to play humongous pranks on pilots, especially new-hires. :eek: Of course, that was before humor was banned from the workplace. :(

Heard a story of a flight to Las Vegas several years back that had a great bunch of passengers and a fun crew. On the way out an announcement was made from the cockpit that they were going to play a little bingo and that the bingo cards were located in the seat backs right there in front of them. If they were unable to locate them, just ring your Flight Attendant call button. The numbers then started coming B5, C7, A1....... Of course there were no bingo cards in the seat backs and within seconds almost every seat was ringing for a flight attendant to get their bingo cards as the numbers kept coming. Passengers were going crazy as they were missing the numbers due to no cards. I may try that one someday - Or Not.

That's just too funny!

I have the southwest pilots song on my MP3 player:D

Now that is really funny!!!!

Well the funny one I pulled the other day.... During my annocuncement I told the pax that the flight attendant had just finished several successful bit parts and on a variety on tv shows and was getting ready for a part on CSI miami.... needless to say I got my laugh in when everone getting off the plane told her good luck on TV and one pax went so far as to hand her some mardi gras beads.... the other one I tried was to tell the plane (on an entirely different flight) that she had been a 1976 olympic figure skater... The best part of that one is some passenger kept insisiting that he had seen her in those olympics some where in germany.....

A while back, pre 9/11, I flew the ATR-72. We had a forward cargo hold between the cockpit and the pax area; it had a walk way that connected the cockpit to the cabin with cargo nets to hold the bags. There was a door between the cockpit and the cargo area and another between the cargo area and the cabin. We had two FAs.
If we had a new FA we had two jokes we would play at night.
1. At cruise altitude, have the FO go to the cargo area and hide. Then call to the back and ask for a drink. The senior FA (who was in on this), would send the new FA to the cockpit. The captain would tell the FA when she showed up with the drink to go back to the lav and tell the FO to hurry up. When the FA responded that the lav was empty and she hadn't seen the FO since we were on the ground, the captain would tell her to stop kidding around, that the FO went back there before the door closed and must still be back there and he was tired of doing everything by himself. Believe it or not, many a FA took this hook line and sinker and started to freak out.
2. Have the FO hide as before. When the FA started to walk through the dark cargo hold, the FO would reach out and grab her. Worked every time.

What's prop wash? :confused:

Sometimes make an announcement to congratulate our FA xxx on being selected "FA of the year", or if she was cute "Miss United Express". it usually made them blush a little.

Not a joke on the FA, but on a fellow commuting pilot.

During one month, my crew had one of our "nice" check airmen on board every week because he was commuting home. Every week he would grab a seat in the back wearing his uniform because he had a very short connection between the last flight of his trip and this one that got him home.

We figured since he was onboard we would take it upon ourselves to include him in our "welcome aboard" announcement right as we were buttoning up. We would commence with your typical announcement but finish it off with: "and folks today we have the pleasure of having our Public Relations Technical Pilot on board. His job is to provide you, our valued customers, with answers to all of those questions you might have regarding our operations and aircraft. So feel free to engage Captain XXX with whatever questions you might have. He is sitting in seat XX and is always eager to interact with our passengers."

Needless to say, he was bombarded with questions during flight. He didn't much appreciate this little prank (especially after a 13 hour duty day), be we sure did get a laugh out of it.

When we are running late I have asked new flight attendants to make an announcement to the passengers to open up all their over head air flow gaspers and point them BACKWARDS towards the rear of the aircraft. This way the airplane would fly just a little bit faster and it could help the pax make their connections.

That one will only work with the blonde ones though ;)

Murano,

I'm sitting here just picturing the FA doing that...I can't help but LOL!

Sometimes we use to help wash the plane if it was doing some big wig run. We woul get the new guy to run back inside for some more soap. "Just ask the stock room for some more 'K9P'."

Heard this one the other day. Bring along a can of vegtable soup. Tell the flight attendent that the FO is sick and come up here and get his sick bag and bring some more. When she comes up, as the FO gives her the bag, intercept it and say, "here I'll take that and gulp down a big mouth full." Watch 'em gage all the way back to the lav.

Better than that one:

I know of an even better version of this joke... have FO regularly buy coffee every day of the trip. On the last day, put soup (beef stew works best) into a ziplock bag. Have FO leave coffee in galley (making sure to ask the FA to watch it) while they do the walkaround.

CA comes out of cockpit, grabs coffee, tosses it out of the cup (works best in the CRJ where you can just pour it out the door), then "barfs" the stew from the bag. Time it so that the FO walks up the stairs just as the CA recovers. FO says thanks for holding my coffee and grabs it from the CA or off the counter. Works great! :D

A buddy of mine told me this one:

His crew had to cancel a revenue leg due to maintenance and wound up ferrying the plane to a maintenance base. There was a DHing crewmember that was going that way and hitched a ride. The flight attendant decided to take a nap in the back since there were no passengers onboard and didn't see the DHer board the plane. The Capt. and FO had the DHing pilot come up into the cockpit and fly the plane and had him lock the door behind him. Then they woke up the F/A in a panic to ask her how to unlock the door from the outside because they were locked out. They let her go for a couple minutes before they told her there was another pilot onboard.

Also with new FA's when they call the cabin, answer " scheduling ... what do you need?" Had one actually say sorry, wrong number then hung up and called us again :)

The best plane for pulling pranks on F/As was the Shorts 330.

We were flying from BWI to ISP (loong way in the skypig) with my girlfriend in the back (F/A). I was flying with a buddy of mine, a former pilot for Air Liberia. He's black, I'm pretty whitebread and I'm bored. Half way there I tell my buddy hey, let's swap seats. So we climb over the center pedestal and trade. Now remember, the cockpit doors in a Shorts are sliding doors to the outside of each pilot's shoulder (you get your own door). I ring the interphone and ask for a soda for me, nothing for Mike, the F/O. Pretty soon I can feel the pitch change as she walks up the aisle. Also, I should say that she liked to give a little squeeze to Captain Happy when she opened the door. Well, she slides the door open, reaches forward, sees this big black hand on the yoke and screams! She drops the drink, slams the door shut and runs to the back of the plane. She cussed us out the rest of the pairing. It was great!

The Shorts had a pretty big overhead panel with all sorts of cool switches and lights. There was one light, I think it was an inverter light that you could make come on without blowing anything up. Guys would get a labelmaker and put T. O'HEAT next to the light. You'd flip the switch, make the light come on and ring the F/A. She'd come up and you'd say,"Hey, Suzie, we have a toilet overheat", pointing to the glowing light. You'd send her back to flush the lav 3 times. She'd come back up and you'd say "sorry, that didn't work - dump a bucket of ice down there". If you really had a live one the coup d'etat would be, "damn - that light is still on. Feel around the bowl to see if you can find which side is hot". They'd come back with a blue hand and you'd say "that's OK, the light went out". You just didn't want to order a beverage after that one.

Then there was the classic landing gear malfunction. This worked REALLY well with 30 businessmen early in the morning. The Shorts had the gear in pods next to the fuselage. There was a 10kt difference if the gear was up or down. You'd call little Suzie up front and say "Suzie we have a gear problem today. We have to check it out before we land. I need you to go by row 6 and jump up and down 4 times. That will help unlock the gear". So she'd go back, you'd wait until the 4th THUMP and put the gear handle down. Worked every time. She'd be so happy that she had helped save the day.

Ahh the good old days!

You boys better behave. Those girls are going to get back at you when you least expect it.

On April Fools Day, we noticed that the FAs were slipping toilet paper over the cockpit door. They put the whole roll over the door and it wound up in a big pile.

To get them back, on the next leg as we taxied out, after I made the normal welcome announcement I said:

Today is a special day for both of our flight attendants. One is an aspiring author who has just been published for the first time. Her debut article, about her recent vacation in Mexico, is on page 45 of this month's Sky magazine and can be found in your seat back pocket.

Our other flight attendant came to us a couple of years ago to conquer her fear of heights. Now that she has conquered her fear, she will be leaving us after this flight in order to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a trapeze artist in the circus.

Please take the time to congratulate them both.
==
Also, the captain took the TP and stuffed it in their overnight bags when they weren't looking.

Not quite a F/A prank, but a student prank: IPs used to get student pilots to test the pitot system by kneeling in front of the jet (T-37) and blowing on it. Of course everything tested ok and at graduation, there'd be pictures floating around of a guy on his knees with a pitot tube in his mouth.

The other one I heard was an instructor pulled the cabin heat lever in the T-37, its bleed air, and makes quite a noise in an already loud jet. The IP told my friend "**** we're going to lose the canopy. Grab it and don't let go." So my friend held on to the canopy for a few minutes before coming to his senses...

Well, you know you can steer the airplane by pushing and pulling on the canopy rail, right??


;)







- The truth only hurts if it should -

I once flew with a flight attendant who confessed her dirty prank on crews she didn't care for.

When she was ready to rip one, she would come into the cockpit and make small talk. As she left, she would release the air between her buns and shut the door behind her.

Now, within seconds the whole cockpit would stick of you know what. None of the pilots would expect that this came from the cute F/A, of course, so it was left for the pilots point blame among each other.

Beeatch!

There's a story that I once heard about one of my former coworkers that called the FA up front and said that they had a "lav contamination" light, and could she go back and just take a look at the lav and see if anything seemed abnormal.

Of course, the FA would go back and check, only to come back and say that the lav was ok... After they landed, the CA would go to the back, discreetly hiding a pair of dishwashing gloves, a water bottle, and some blue food coloring. He'd put on one glove, pop the lid on the bottle, color it blue (including making sure that some dye ran down the side and on the gloves), then walk back up to the front.

He explained that the airline next door had a "lav water quality analysis kit" and hand the other glove to the FA and ask her if she would go over and ask them to test the sample... Apparently it always made for great fun watching the reaction of the other airlines employees.

I remeber one of our caps at UFS doing with the IOE FA's the " oh crap, I forogot the keys inside ops, could you please go get them while we finish the peperwork so we can go early"? it was awsome. they always run across the ramp to ops and ask for the keys to start the batplane:D

In a regional ariline, during cruise, the crew called for coffee, and both pilots went out and hit in the cargo hold.
When the poor F/A came to the flightdeck and saw no one was there, they jumped her from behind, and she fainted.

Who's flying the plane :confused:

George (A/P)

edited...,,,

this should make for some interesting comments...

just dont use names

A similiar story, but no f/as:
I used to work in the ramp tower for my airline, where among other positions we had 2 ramp controllers (north/south). I routinely sat north ramp, and a female friend of mine with a cute voice that the crews liked would sit on the south side. Occasionally when we were both working, i'd quietly instruct a flight to "contract south ramp, and it's her birthday". 10 seconds later I'd get slapped on the back of the head. Had some funny reactions. One crew had both pilots singing happy birthday to her on the radio, another bought flowers in a concourse shop and brought them up. I was in tears laughing.

A few weeks ago we were holding short of RWY 28 at SYR (flow into PHL... imagine that) and I noticed out the left side there were dozens of pink flamingos. If you have ever been to SYR you know that there are flamingos in the grass in the summer and penguins in the winter... I have no idea why. Obviously fake, but I just had to call the FA and tell her about them. I never mentioned whether they were fake or real, but she assumed they were real and proceeded to inform the passengers... she was really mad me when she realized they were fake! Those passengers must have thought she was crazy!