Coffee, tea or a professional responsible for your life?

Source: www.freep.com
Author: Ellen Creager

Amid screams and chaos, flight attendants grabbed fire extinguishers and put out the blaze, and together with passengers they subdued the man who officials say tried to set off a bomb as the flight approached Detroit Metro on Christmas Day.

Northwest flight attendant Dionne Ransom-Monroe confronted the man. Flight attendants handcuffed him.

So if you think of flight attendants as nothing more than juice-pourers and seatbelt nags, change your mind.

Flight attendants' roles keeps expanding.

Pilots locked in the flight deck? Flight attendants are frontline security now.

Airlines charging for checked luggage? Flight attendants are luggage porters for carry-ons.

National flu emergency? Flight attendants scout for sick passengers and try not to fall ill themselves.

Babies need delivering? They find a doctor aboard or do it themselves.

"We are responsible even for birth and death," says Diana Mitcham, president of the Association of Flight Attendants Council 94-Detroit. "We do a lot more than what passengers see."

Flight 253, on approach to Detroit from Amsterdam, asked the ultimate of flight attendants -- to risk their lives to save the plane.

But that's not all.

In December, more details emerged aboutthe case of the Northwest pilots who overshot Minneapolis on a flight last summer; they were out of contact with ground control for 77 minutes. It turns out that the person who finally got their attention wasn't an airport dispatcher. It was flight attendant Barbara Logan, who reached them on the intercom.

And last month, Southwest Airlines flight attendants Lisa Hamm and Sherry Osborne helped deliver a baby boy somewhere over Nebraska, aboard Flight 441.

It was all part of the job, they later said modestly. They even found scissors to clip a shoestring to tie the umbilical cord.

Could you do the same? I didn't think so.

All part of the job

A true job description for a flight attendant these days is a lot longer than flying waitress.

One longtime Northwest flight attendant summarized the job this way for me:

• Firefighter: Trained in battling blazes caused by everything from a cigarette in the john to aircraft fires.

• Weapons inspector: Can identify suspicious behavior among passengers and possible weapons, including anthrax.

• Emergency leader: Shepherds passengers in aircraft emergencies.

• Waitress, bartender and cook: Feeds hundreds from a kitchen the size of a postage stamp.

• Pilot "wife": Serves as the eyes and ears connecting the pilots to the scene in the cabin.

• Baby-sitter and pet-sitter: Soothes fussy babies, distressed elderly passengers and even ornery pets who sometimes wet the carpet or worse.

• Medic: Trained in CPR, infant delivery, emergency first aid and more.

• Psychologist: Acts as counselor to the fearful, minister to the crying, soother of the impatient.

• Luggage porter: Can miraculously fit everyone's carry-ons in the overhead.

• Tour guide: Explains what passengers are seeing outside the window.

• Seller of products: Peddles everything from chips to booze.

• Technician: Can fix in-flight entertainment systems and broken seats.

• Zombie: Can stay awake for 24 hours, surviving on catnaps.

Doing more with less

Northwest flight attendants took a 40% pay cut when the airline went through bankruptcy a few years ago. Like many workers in America, they are doing more with less. This year, they will face a vote in their merger with Delta that might wipe out their union -- or expand it to new members.

Still, most flight attendants love their jobs, even the crazy parts, Mitcham says.

So "this isn't the argument 'feel sorry for us,' " she says. "We just want to tell people, have respect."