Working the flight your family is on: the strange, lovely, slightly awful experience
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#1 My parents flew Auckland to Dubai on my flight last month. I was working economy, they were in row 40, and I need to know if the mix of feelings I had is normal, because it was the strangest sector of my career.
How it happened
They booked staff travel on a date, I bid the date, the bid landed. The purser knew. The captain knew, because the purser told him, and he did a PA welcoming 'the parents of one of our crew, who are about to find out what she actually does all day'. My mother cried at that. We were still on the ground.
The lovely
Watching my father watch me do the safety demo. He has never seen me at work. He had a face I had not seen since a school play. Serving my mother a meal in my uniform and her saying 'thank you, dear' as though I were a stranger and then laughing. The crew being extra nice to them in a way that made me want to hide and also made me want to hug everyone.
The awful
The passenger two rows in front of my parents who was rude to me for twenty minutes about a seat, while my mother watched with the expression of a woman deciding whether to intervene. I have never handled a passenger so carefully in my life. My father afterwards: 'You were very patient. I would not have been.' That is the review that matters.
Also the tiredness. Fourteen hours of working and being watched by the two people who worry about me most. I could not hide the hour twelve face. My mother has now seen the hour twelve face and asks about my sleep more than she did.
The strange
Saying goodbye at the aircraft door in uniform, with my purser watching, and then going to the crew bus while they went to the taxi. Same city, different worlds, for ten more minutes.
Has anyone else worked their family's flight? Would you do it again? I think I would, once more, and never again.
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#2 My mother flew Nairobi to Dubai on my flight in my second year. The captain did the PA. She cried. The rude passenger was in the row behind her. She did intervene. It was not a large intervention but it was an intervention. I have not bid her flight since and I love her very much.
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#3 Domestic, so my kids have flown my flights several times and the novelty is gone for them, which is the version you eventually reach. The first time, my daughter told the entire row that I was her mum and that I was 'the boss of the plane'. I was not. I let it stand.
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#4 Worked my brother's honeymoon flight, upper deck, by accident. The bid was for the route, not the date. He did not know until boarding. His wife's face when I appeared with champagne in the uniform is a photograph I have.
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#5 My mother flew Mexico City to Monterrey on my flight and spent the whole sector telling the woman next to her about me. The woman was very polite. I served them both and the woman said 'your mother is very proud' in a tone that meant 'please make her stop'.
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#6 @hectorcdmx the neighbour who has heard the whole story. I had one of those too. She asked for a second wine and I understood why.
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#7 Norwegian, and my father flew Stockholm to Alicante on my flight and bought a scratch card from me, which I sold to him with the full script, and he won nothing, and it remains the family's favourite story about my job.