Covid in the sky Part 1

 A Flight Attendants Perspective. 

 The beginning of Covid:

Going to work felt as if I was stepping  into the twilight zone. The highway was empty; the parking lot bare with only airport employee vehicles. We no longer had to park at the employee lot because there were no more shuttle drivers to take us to the airport. This was just one of the many jobs lost last year. It was as if the airport became silent overnight.  Like turning off a light switch, one day it was busy, full of wide-eyed travelers and the next it was an eerie ghost town. 

 

Looking back it was probably the safest place to work at the time, but when I walked the terminals and heard only the echo of my clicking heels throughout the airport it became the place I least wanted to be.  VTO (Voluntary Time Off) was being offered anywhere from 1-6 months almost anyone who opt’d in was being approved. Unfortunately holding no seniority at my base I was denied leave and worked through it all, my days consisted of flying empty airplanes around and around.

 

When we did have passengers they were often just crew members relocating to fly a different empty plane around. It felt like a nightmare that wouldn’t end. Flights were canceling left and right Crew members spent hours upon hours just sitting in the airport with no food open just gated up shops. Airplanes went unstocked and we received updates on service almost daily. First it was service with gloves (in all honesty I’m shocked that it wasn't a requirement before). Then it was no more ice or coffee, next they took away pouring drinks until eventually they suspended service all together. Masks were scarce world wide, so we were required to go to the crew lounge at the beginning of a trip and call the company in order to get a code to open a lock box to get 4 face masks in a plastic zip lock baggy, 1 for each day of the trip. As I sit here and write this I am taken back to a time where masks were like currency and now they can be found everywhere, airplanes are stocked full of them in closets and atlas's.  

 

Life as a flight attendant during Covid initially was the scariest most boring job imaginable. Nothing was open! I'm talking not even Starbucks!! so not only did I feel like I was going to die going to work I wasn't even going to be caffeinated.  Work actually consisted of sitting and doing absolutely nothing. Nobody was flying and the people that were, didn't want us to go near them(us being flight attendants). I don't actually blame them,  a meme had gone viral that listed "Spots with the most germs" and flight attendants were right there along side shower curtains, contact cases, beds and lemon wedges. We truly had nothing but time on our hands so Reading, going to school (online classes), creating blogs, drawing all became major hobbies in the aviation world. Meal  prepping became mandatory when you spend the night eating carrots and a cookie ice cream for dinner because there is nowhere to go to get anything to eat, you quickly learn how to pack a lunch.  

 

At the beginning of Covid I was a “Hero” the few essential passengers we did have on our flights showed us nothing but gratitude and in all honesty I truly needed it because fear was rushing through my body on a daily basis. The news that the virus stays on your clothes and in your hair was terrifying. What if I bring this home to my family?  Was my job that I fought so long and hard to get worth the risk?  I sat in my jump seat and heard of the news of Compass airlines going under my stomach was a pit. I had just flown on a compass flight as a passenger and the flight attendant had told me how she was going to training to become an IOE instructor and her class was postponed due to covid and now she has lost her wings entirely.  Next came the furlough letters, to dear friends of mine that had moved on from regional flying to the majors, the legacy airlines. It was like everything was falling apart all around me and I just sat in empty planes waiting for it to knock me down.