The crew who fly the same route for years: the London A380 crews, the Perth to London regulars, the Cape Town lifers, and why some crew stop wanting variety

Purser, and there is a kind of crew member who exists at every big airline and who the new joiners do not understand: the one who bids the same route, month after month, for years. The London regular. The Sydney lifer. The crew member who has done Johannesburg two hundred times and wants two hundred more. This thread is for them and about them.

Why it happens

At first the job is variety: a different city every trip, the whole map. Around year four or five, for some crew, the variety stops being the point and the routine becomes it. They know the hotel room that faces away from the street. They know the restaurant that is open at the hour they land. They know the crew who bid the same route, and the route becomes a small airline inside the big one, with its own regulars and its own jokes. The body clock adjusts to one pattern instead of twelve. The layover becomes a second home rather than a place to see.

The London regulars

At Emirates the A380 to Heathrow has crew who bid it every month. They have a flat share in west London for the layover instead of the hotel, some of them. They know the Tube better than the passengers. They fly with the same pursers. It is, for them, the best job in the world: Dubai and London, alternating, forever.

The other regulars

The Qantas Perth to London crews who have done the 17 hours more times than anyone alive. The BA Cape Town lifers who bid it for the southern summer every year and have friends in the city. The United Tokyo crews with their ramen lists. The KLM Africa crews who bid Nairobi for a decade. Every airline has its route regulars and they are the crew who know things.

What the new joiners think

That they are boring. That they have given up on the job's variety. That they are the old guard.

What they actually are

The crew who have worked out what they want from the job and bid for it. The crew whose bodies do one time zone swing instead of ten. The crew who have a life in two cities instead of a hotel in twenty. And, often, the crew who are still flying at twenty years while the variety crew burned out at eight.

The question

Which route would you fly forever, if you could? And if you are already a regular, which one is it and how many times have you done it? I am not there yet. I still want the map. But I have started to understand the London crews, and I think that is what year seven does to you.