Sharla Dawn Gorder

Check this out.  This is me in a print ad sometime around 1987.  I had just been “sold” by Pan Am to United Airlines, and was supplementing my income working as a flight attendant with income acting as a flight attendant.  That was about the extent of my acting career in LA.  But my flight attendant career spanned 18 years.  And I would not trade a minute of it for any other way of life.  Not even the DC-10 years.  (Well, maybe the DC-10 years.)

My first month on the payroll with Pan Am, I—little Gulf Breeze beach chick—visited four continents, and over the years I would frequent six of the seven.  (Antarctica never made the schedule.)

For 18 years I traveled the world in a blue suit and pumps.  People often ask if I had a favorite layover destination. And though I loved Rome and Fiji and even Seoul, Korea, I can’t deny that I have a sentimental favorite.  I met my husband there.  Or on the way there.

We met on board United Airlines non-stop flight 815 from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia.  I often joke that our first date was 15 hours long with 400 chaperones.  Ted was (and is) so handsome and smart and sweet and funny, and once I started flirting with him, I just couldn’t stop.  My best friend, Melendy, was working that flight with me, and she, loving intuitive woman that she was (and is), took it upon herself to try to cover for me until I could extricate my head from the clouds.  (Ha! Still working on that, 25 years later!)

The rest of the crew on flight 815 was not so understanding, and on the return flight, they gave me quite a bit of flak for my negligence.  So, of course, I buckled down and did my job doubly well on the way back.  Or not. 

No, on the way back to LA, I continued my flirtation with Ted.  No, I didn’t drag him back across the ocean with me; he was working in Melbourne.  But I wrote him a letter.  A love letter.  By far the best love letter I have ever written.  And he married me a couple of years later. 

It was very unconventional as love letters go.  And it may only be funny or meaningful to my flight attendant friends, but it made him laugh, and that is perhaps the biggest secret of our success in marriage.  We crack each other up. 

It seems Ted and I had broken oh so many rules during our 15 hour date aboard flight 815.  I decided that it was surely all his fault and thought to elucidate for him some of the finer points of air travel in the Friendly Skies.  I wrote up this list of PAX (passenger) RULES and REGULATIONS in the official 30-3 format of correspondence the airline used to dictate policy to flight attendants.  I faxed them on letterhead stationary to his office in Melbourne the next day.   (No email or FB back in the day)

He has been a compliant passenger and devoted best friend and husband ever since. 

 

PAX REGS                                  EFF. DEC 7-89

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UAL Passenger Rules and Regulations
Series 1

 

On your Flight Attendant (hereafter referred to as FA) crew:  Recognize and obsequiously defer to our awesome omnipotence aboard the aircraft. Don’t let the sensible shoes and aprons fool you into imagining that we are here to serve you. Our primary goal is to invoke abject obeisance. Failure to comply will make your sojourn high hell.

2. On jumpseats:  Do not, under any circumstance occupy a Flight Attendant jumpseat. This is the ultimate transgression.  Our jumpseats are our thrones, and it is advisable not to even gaze upon them.  Avert thine eyes.

3. On galleys:  Likewise, galleys are hallowed ground, to be inhabited solely by FAs and an occasional invited guest, usually the object of a FA flirtation. (How to know if you are being flirted with:  The FA speaks to you in complete sentences and puts back on her pumps.)

4. On appendages:  Keep them tidy.  Elbows, knuckles, knees, feet and shoulders should not overlap the outermost edge of any aisle seat. FAs monitor this regularly and ardently enforce compliance.  A little reckless hip action on the part of one of our fuller-figured FAs goes a long way toward discouraging errant appendage action on the part of an unfastidious passenger.

5. On ordering a cocktail:  When a FA solicits your drink order and you are merrily plugged into the audio system, do not remove your glasses in order to better hear the FAs query, as this has never been known to improve your auditory capacity.  Along the same lines, abruptly shouting your request (to be heard over the symphony only you are privy to) is quite unnecessary and may indeed awaken the pilots.

6. On recognizing patterns and responding appropriately: When a FA approaches you with anything which requires a large flat surface, review your options and do the right thing.  If befuddled, imitate the passengers in the rows before you.  Tray tables, while often cleverly concealed in your armrest, are relatively easy to master if you apply yourself.

7. On being asked what you would like for dinner: Be advised that is not an essay question.  A simple “Chicken, please,” or “I’d be delighted to have the beef” will suffice.  Only your nutritionist need know what you’ve eaten for the past two weeks.

8. On not getting your first choice of entrée selection: Be aware that this is not the last supper.

9. On soft drink services: It is recommended that you review your colors before attempting to participate in a late night soft drink service. Coke is generally brownish in color, orange juice, predictable orange, and 7-up is colorless.  When offered from a tray it is lazy to ask which is which.  Think about it for a moment and make your selection without clues.  You’ll be a better person for it.

10. On seconds:  When asked if you would like another cup of coffee, it is not polite to wordlessly point to the inside of your cup.  We are trained professionals, and will not under any circumstances pour it on your salad.

11. On setting your watch:  Consider the manner in which wrist watches are worn (coincidentally, on the wrist) before asking a FA carrying a stack of dirty trays, the time.  A sudden rotation of said wrist, while possibly rendering the correct time, has undesirable consequences.

12. On profane complaining and whining:  Pretend you cannot hear us in the galley.

13. On attempting to impress the person seated next to you:  Before demanding items of a pretentious nature and out of your league (as is the sport on airplanes), check the correct pronunciation with an established rich person.  It is poor form to boldly order Perrier rhyming it with derriere, pâté sounding like bait, Grand Marnier if it conjures up the image of an esteemed sailor, and Benedictine if the inadvertent deletion of a syllable or two causes it to be confused with a feminine hygiene product.

14. On using the FA call button:  Don’t.

15. On sleeping with your mouth open and body strangely contorted:  This is acceptable in that it provides a little late night entertainment for the crew.  Loud, unmetered snoring and indiscriminate drooling however, are strictly prohibited.

16. On preparing for landing:  When the pilot announces that we are making of final approach for landing, do not anxiously inquire into the status of implied previous approaches.  Airline terminology can be confusing.