days of domestic

I set myself up with blocks of 3 or 6 days so I can somewhat know what will happen scheduling wise. On my return to work this month, I was good for nine days (which is allowed at the months beginning). Ideally I would work three trips and catch the flight home on Thursday night.

Obviously this isn’t the case…

On my first day back, I was assigned airport alert. So far I had really good luck with getting not only a trip but a great trips. No such luck this time. What is did was left me with two days in scheduling’s hands at the end. So after my glamour of Paris and Madrid, I was assigned a domestic two day trip.
The check in wasn’t until 2000, which this late sleeper likes, and the first leg was a dead head to Vegas. It wasn’t too shabby as the crew was nice and gave me water and a first class seat. Luckily I was able to sleep for a couple of hours. After the five and a half hour flight, I gather my belongings and looked for coffee. There was none to be found in the immediate area so I walked the next-door gate and bored the flight I was sent to work. The local time now is midnight, three a.m. to me. It was a red eye back to Houston.

They assigned me first class galley and as usual, I had not a clue where anything was, didn’t know that I was supposed to stand for the demo. But it was plenty of time to figure it out as I only served four drinks the whole flight and then read my book.

Had eleven hours in the airport hotel before I worked the next flight back to base. Again, I was first class galley but this time had an aisle guy. I was trying to convince him to do a nice international like service but he was having none of it.

The huge difference between domestic an international is the pride we take in our service, our appearance and our hard work ethic. I was informed that the domestic flight attendants don’t get off their jump seats to work until the seatbelt sign goes off. This is long after international people; we jump up as soon as the double ding.

Our service is consistent, thoughtful and lengthy. We used pick up pans for rubbish not trash bags. In first class a silver tray is attached to your hand. The differences could go on and on. It made me grateful to be in my base and proud to be a hard worker. It was honestly hard to try to go with the domestic flow and not work hard. It was a nice break and even though I exchanged my Thursday night for a nights sleep in the crew room, it is nice to be on my way home and not exhausted from time changes and working my butt off!