Eshin Direct

At the risk of incurring the wrath of my better half, I’m posting up some interesting tidbits about flight attendants. Having dated two flight attendants in the past, she’s a little wary of them, more specifically, wary of me with them.

Delta Airlines recently fired self-styled Queen of the Sky, Ellen Simonetti, for posting up pictures of her in uniform on her blog. The collision of freedom of speech and engineered corporate imagery is renewed as Simonetti takes her former employers to court.

One wonders whether Delta Airlines is more worried about Simonetti herself degrading the high standards of how a flight attendant should compose herself, or that someone has simply exposed the rather frumpy uniforms they currently have.

Delta recently unveiled the latest incarnation of a proposed uniform design (via The Travel Insider) which suggests that someone in their marketing design department has either spent too much time watching View From The Top or reading Coffee, Tea or Me. In a bright red monstronsity designed to turn their ladies of the sky into glamour pusses, Delta’s certainly giving Cathay Pacific a run for their money in the bright red tomato stakes. Perhaps CX should find its inspiration in Wong Kar Wai’s 2046?

Of course, Delta isn’t the only one responsible for creating this image paradox of lust icons and professional service reps. Singapore Airlines spends about six months training their cabin crew to be proper ladies while at the same time packaging them up in the classic Singapore Girl sarongs and that age old sexually charged tagline, Singapore Girl, You’re A Great Way To Fly. Is SQ perhaps the only airline in the world where there is the famous pen trick?

Is it any wonder then, that Cabin Crew’s remix of Star To Fall video (Streaming WMV via Richii.com) features just about every male’s fantasy about what a flight attendant should be? No doubt this is following on the footsteps of last year’s runaway perv sensation, Eric Prydz’ Call On Me remix. More evidence that the air hostess image hasn’t quite died.

For the real practicality of dating a flight attendant, one should read Chad Childer’s Sinosplice offers a post about a disgruntled China Eastern Airlines cabin crew who decided to take out her frustration in a Shanghainese rap about being a flight attendant (WMV, 4.34MB).

From my experience of dating two flight attendants, the best passengers are the ones that aren’t difficult and let them get on with their job. If you really want to show your appreciation to them, take down their name and write a letter to their airline. The credit they earn will probably go a lot further than your phone number.

Tags: Surfer Rants