Hey guys, hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years - my holidays were spent in Paris and San Francisco respectively. Great cities but since it was the holidays many of the places I wanted to visit were closed :-( Fortunately the crew were great on both flights and for New Years especially I had a wonderful time ringing in the New Year in the crew room just chatting and having a very low-key party. And the best part was I didn't have to worry about how hard it was going to be to find a taxi back to the hotel and back to bed!

So occasionally in this job you come across some slang terms that are used which are just comedy gold, and over the next couple of posts I'll feature some of the best on this here website. If you have any others to suggest feel free to leave a comment and it may end up in my next post!


"Finish Him/Her" - Ever played Mortal Kombat? Street Fighter? I did, mostly from having a little brother (or my best mate Kris) equipped with a NES then a SNES at home, and needing someone to beat. In this game there was a point where the healthy character would be one punch away from a fatality, and the weak one was dizzy, swaying, mostly bloodied, and was basically lucky to be still standing. The same look could be said about a passenger, usually a little kid, who after experiencing extreme turbulence is motion sick, and has the same dizzy, swaying motion about him/her before they 'explode'. This is the universal indicator for FA's everywhere to either 1. Clear the area or to 2. Shove the person in the nearest toilet and pray that the lid of the bowl is up. Since hearing about this term from TrayTable, I have since saved myself from the vomit shower on 2 occasions simply by recognising the Finish Him/Her look.

"Aisle Salmon" - A genius term I read of the news.com.au site. Someone who either during boarding or disembarkation tries to walk against the flow of the other passengers after forgetting or leaving something behind. There's one on every flight, and whilst I hardly see them anymore now that I work first class, sometimes if I help out Economy with their boarding we FA's try to pick out who the Aisle Salmon are.


"Kevin" - A generic term for the little boy who is super annoying to the cabin crew and/or other passengers. Could be through being sick everywhere, through pushing the call button more than is humanly acceptable, asking for food items which are difficult to prepare onboard ie. cheeseburgers and french fries, or going to the toilet and peeing everywhere except in the bowl. Name is taken from the Macauley Culkin character Kevin McCallister in Home Alone.

"Galley FM" - Flight attendants gossiping about airline or other matters, or what rumours a fellow hostie has heard on board. Because if there's one thing we love to do, it's gossip.

"Baggage Tetris" - Where you have a relatively full cabin, and there are a lot of large bags in the overhead lockers, and some on the floor, and you have to move them all over the place to make all of them fit, usually within a tight time frame for fear of delaying the aircraft.


"Rubber Jungle" - A pilot term, for when the oxygen masks have all been deployed in the cabin, for whatever reason.

Images courtesy of gamesyte, collider.

Labels: Airline Stuff, Galley Gossip, Random Thoughts, Work

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