Veteran air hostess reveals how to spot a mile-high menace from a mile away

Cabin crew training covers all sorts of eventualities. We learn first aid, how to cope with nervous flyers, and what to do in an emergency.

And we’re also, alas, taught what to do after being slapped on the bottom while pouring someone’s drink. How to negotiate with an abusive passenger high on Valium. The best way to clean up a posh woman’s wine-induced vomit.

When I read the latest survey from the union Unite last week describing widespread abuse and harassment across the aviation sector, with 74 per cent of workers at Gatwick receiving verbal abuse every month and 42 per cent reporting physical abuse, I could only sigh in horrible recognition. This was a daily part of my life too for years.

And by far the biggest trigger – cited by 95 per cent of cabin crew in the Unite survey – was alcohol.

Most adults assume they can handle their drink. Some are even cockily confident they can handle quantities of prescription medication designed to ‘relax’ them, and other sorts of drugs too.

But an aircraft cabin at 35,000ft is not the wisest place to put such misguided confidence to the test – and the cabin crew regularly see the fallout.

In fact, we’re watching you long before you reach that point. Passengers seem to imagine we stop paying attention once the drinks have been served, but in reality that’s when we start to observe passengers most closely. Behind my lipstick smile, I’m calculating who needs keeping a strict eye on, who needs slowing down and who absolutely must not have another bottle of vino.

I worked as cabin crew for 25 years and I became remarkably perceptive. In fact, I reckon I can read people better than a CIA operative.

The bottle of vodka stashed in a designer handbag? Spotted it straight away.

The colleagues who boarded with their laptops and are now holding hands? Busted.

The tipsy couple about to pick a fight? I’m already checking if we have a spare seat elsewhere.

Here are just some of the highlights I’ve had to deal with during my career in the air…

Pre-flight loaders

In my experience, groups of women are generally less likely than groups of lads to get completely blotto on a flight.

But a woman travelling alone could be another matter, particularly after a delay. Some would spend the wait knocking back large, 250ml glasses of wine in the airport bar next to the departure gate.

Ground staff would sometimes give us a heads-up about passengers they thought we should keep an eye on.

On one flight, we were delayed for half an hour before take-off. There was a woman slumped down in her seat, wearing a Panama hat and babbling away to her son on the phone.

She was also sipping from a bottle she had tucked into her Mulberry handbag, apparently assuming I couldn’t see what she was doing. I jolly well could.

I kept going over to ask her to put her phone down and switch it off. She would comply, then put it back on again.

It became a ridiculous cycle. Eventually, I warned her that she could be taken off the flight, and only then did she stop. I put her phone in her bag and stowed it in the overhead locker. She was zero trouble once airborne and snored throughout the flight.

Cocaine risks 

Passengers under the influence can cause serious safety issues too. On one day-time flight to a Spanish city I noticed a young man whose pupils were rather dilated.

He kept wiping his nose and was talking nineteen to the dozen to the passenger next to him. I suspected he’d taken cocaine, although I had no way of knowing for certain.

Then his behaviour became positively alarming. ‘I need to get off,’ he announced forcefully at one point halfway through the flight, getting up and walking towards the emergency exit.

He was at least six feet tall. I’m five foot two. As he approached the aircraft door, it was increasingly clear he was preparing to try and open it. I shouted at him, ‘You are not going to do that.’

Even now I couldn’t tell you how I was physically able to turn him around and march him back into a seat. I was young, and it was my first experience of a passenger high as a kite. Only afterwards did I think, ‘I ought to mention this to my purser, who’s responsible for cabin safety.’

Was the man’s seat and name put on a banned list? I bloody hope so.

Tipsy colleagues

After something like that, you find yourself looking almost fondly on the incipient affairs fuelled by alcohol. Two people board together and it’s fairly obvious they are colleagues on a business trip. Out come the computers, and for the first hour they are working alongside one another.

Then the drinks start arriving. She’s on the Prosecco, he’s on the gin and tonics, and gradually the atmosphere changes. They become increasingly friendly and tactile.

Sometimes hands disappear beneath blankets. Sometimes the pair disappear to the loo together.

One pair were staying at the same hotel as us crew. Having watched them become very friendly on board, we saw them cosying up to one another in the hotel bar that evening too.

In-flight infighting

At the other end of the romantic spectrum are the ones ending their relationships.

One couple travelling with their two children and the grandparents had an enormous row in economy.

Even before the seatbelt sign had been switched off, she was goading him and by the time we reached cruising altitude, she was swearing at him beneath her breath. It was pretty obvious she was steaming drunk and I watched in horror as things escalated to full-on, in each other’s faces shouting. None of the other passengers knew where to look, but it was my job to sort it out before it got physical.

We had a spare seat in the most expensive cabin, so I moved the least volatile party – the husband – there to separate them.

We sat the children with their grandparents and kept the woman apart from them. I was assigned to monitor her to make sure she didn’t go looking for him to continue the argument. The authorities escorted her off the aircraft when we landed.

Steaming celebrities

You can often get a fairly good idea of the flight ahead simply by looking at the destination. Ibiza flights are often exactly what you imagine.

On one trip, we’d left the gate and were about to taxi to the runway – we’d already had the ‘doors to automatic and cross-check’ instruction – when a celebrity suddenly jumped up and insisted we go back. He was convinced he had left his phone behind.

It was obvious the man was inebriated and he really did make a terrific fuss. Other passengers were starting to call out for him to sit down, but there was no reasoning with him. As far as he was concerned, we needed to turn the aircraft around so he could retrieve it. The captain eventually decided that the safer, less stressful option was to return and let him off.

So back we went. Of course, we then left in 20 minutes or so without him. I do hope his luggage was taken off.

Tanked up on Valium

On a flight to Orlando I was in the jump seat and, on take-off, the woman sitting opposite me repeatedly muttered in my direction, calling me a ‘f***ing stuck-up bitch’. She wanted to give me what for because I was looking at her ‘aggressively’.

As soon as the seatbelt sign was off I jumped up and got out of her way. It was my poor colleague who ended up spending the flight calming her down and dealing with her mutinous behaviour.

It was only when we landed that she apologised, explaining that she was terribly nervous about flying and had taken some Valium, along with a glass of wine, in an effort to knock herself out.

Sozzled stag-dos

From April onwards, the Las Vegas routes are chock-a-block with stag parties. Mostly the groups of lads are harmless. Mostly. On one occasion, a male passenger came over while I was in the rear galley.

I’d chit-chatted with him earlier. Believe me, I know when friendliness tips over to flirtation and I had not crossed that line.

But he’d become increasingly inebriated, and by now he was slurring. He tapped me on the shoulder, I turned around and saw he had unzipped his trousers and was quite obviously inviting me to take a look. ‘Do yourself back up please sir,’ I said coldly, wondering whether to activate the protocol for inappropriate behaviour, which might have seen him met at the other end by local law enforcement, or to simply send him back to his seat with a withering look.

I did the latter and made sure everyone knew not to serve him any more alcohol for the rest of the flight. I didn’t feel frightened for my safety, but I was shocked by what he thought was acceptable.

The big problem with alcohol onboard is that you can’t control what they’ve had landside and you don’t know what they’ve bought in duty free. One group of men had consistently been requesting soft drinks – but were also getting louder and louder.

At the end of the flight, we found vodka bottles underneath their seats: as we’d suspected, they’d been mixing their own drinks using alcohol they’d stashed in their under-seat bag.

Sloshed golfers

It’s not just the young off for a week of clubbing who start their holidays with too much to drink. Groups of men travelling to Florida for golfing holidays could be just as loud and leery.

I remember one chap, rather than ring the call bell, marched into the galley to ask for another drink. I turned away to fetch the bottles only to feel my bottom being slapped. This was before the #MeToo movement and the prevailing ethos was that you mustn’t offend the passenger. I had to laugh it off and carry on working.

Sometimes, on long flights, we’d run out of the little bottles of spirits altogether. On those occasions, I had my own way of slowing down passengers who were drinking too much.

‘I can’t give you bottles any more,’ I would say. ‘But I can mix you a drink.’ What they received was overwhelmingly soft, with just the smallest splash of alcohol. As I used to think of it: two per cent booze, 98 per cent mixer.

Mini wine bottle boozers

People imagine that first-class ticket-holders will be sophisticated and well behaved, but that certainly isn’t always the case.

One well-to-do female passenger on a flight from London to Washington DC was beautifully dressed, wearing expensive-looking jewellery and a very smart handbag. She was also incredibly rude and condescending. Nothing was right, including the food.

She wanted a meal we’d run out of and was furious she couldn’t have her first choice.

In fairness, passengers like her spend thousands on a ticket so I made sure I got her one by swapping with someone more amenable. Yet she complained about that, too, saying it wasn’t hot enough.

All the while, she kept demanding more red wine. Before I went on my break, I warned my colleagues that she was fairly sozzled and asked them to keep an eye on her. When I came back, she was absolutely plastered and had been sick on herself. Splatters of red wine all over her clothes, and yet was still (unbelievably!) asking for more. At that point I told her no and suggested water.

When we landed, she ended up stumbling out of the cabin, practically falling down the stairs, with red-wine vomit down her formerly beautiful outfit. Karma, eh? I couldn’t help secretly smiling as I watched her go.

As told to Samantha Brick