Have you ever wondered why flight attendants tend not to put your luggage up into the overhead lockers for you? One member of the cabin crew has now revealed all
A flight attendant has revealed the real reason that they won’t offer to put your luggage in the overhead locker – and it makes a lot of sense.
Travellers are all too aware of how much of a struggle it can be trying to lift your bags up into the storage compartment on a plane. While you might be able to get fellow passengers to give you a hand, staff are highly unlikely to step in.
Now flight attendant Kat Kamalani has explained why. Taking to TikTok, she explained that people often risk injuring themselves as they lift overpacked suitcases into lockers. And the same is true of cabin crew, who regularly hurt their shoulders or backs lifting luggage into lockers.
In fact, it became such a common issue that the US Associate of Flight Attendants has advised its members not to help customers with this task, due to insurers not covering medical bills.
“Crazy fact…everyone thinks it’s the flight attendant’s job to lift your luggage into the bins, but it’s not,” she said. “Actually, our airline, and a ton of other airlines, tell you ‘do not do this’ because you get so many injuries with it. And you’re not even covered.”
It comes after a flight attendant shared their go-to trick for dealing with passengers who refuse to swap seats with those travelling with young children.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Orlando-based flight attendant Mitra Amirzadeh explained that if a child is mixed up in a heated seat-swapping dilemma, she’ll step in to try and smooth things over – using all her powers of diplomacy.
Mitra, who is also a union rep for an airline that charges passengers for advanced seat selection, told the publication: “I have said before, ‘OK, so you’re going to watch the toddler? You’ll want their snacks and their colouring books then, because they’re going to need that’.”
As you can imagine, this motivates plenty of passengers to move sharpish. The cabin crew member went on to clarify however that she very rarely intervenes in cases which don’t involve kids – for example with couples who simply want to sit together, despite not having planned for such an eventuality at the time of booking.
Mitra continued: “The next time you feel yourself getting angry or getting frustrated that you’re not getting the seat you want, you need to remind yourself that you didn’t pay to pick your seat. Otherwise, you’d be in it.”
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