I have a good friend who's a flight attendant. I asked him what he thought of Steven Slater and he agreed to let me post his response so long as I left his name and airline out.
As a flight attendant, I'm very curious about the passenger involved. What happened to her? Why isn't her name, MySpace page, photos, and family history all over the Internet? If the story most outlets are reporting is correct, this woman broke a federal law—twice. First when she disregarded the captain's seat-belt sign, and second when she refused to comply with a directive from a member of the flight crew.If this woman was up before the seat belt sign was removed, it was clearly a safety issue that a flight attendant should have addressed, even more so if she was removing a bag from the overhead bin. If you've ever had to stop your car short at a stop light, you know how people and objects can go flying forward. That force increases exponentially when you go from a two-ton car to a twenty-ton steel tube; when planes stop short people and objects can and do go flying. Being up and out of your seat before the safety brake gets set is not just a physical threat to the person who's moving around, but also to all the people around that he or she could fall onto or into.
It is this physical threat that makes staying seated when the seat belt sign is on a FEDERALLY MANDATED SAFETY RULE. And yes, there are many of these rules on a plane, regarding all kinds of things. Turning your cell phone off. Bringing your seat back up. Pushing your purse under the seat in front of you. And it's important to note that just because passengers don't always bother to understand the reasons behind these rules, that doesn't mean they aren't valid. Flight attendants are not making these things up, we're not asking you to follow these rules just for our own amusement, we really couldn't give a shit about your purse, what's in it, who designed it, how much you paid for it, etc.
Flight attendants spend time making announcements—the vast majority of which are ignored—and then issuing reminders to people. We are always telling people they must be seated and not using the lavatory when the seat belt sign is on. (Again, flight attendants really don't care when you urinate. Really, really don't. We may not understand why you didn't use the bathroom—the much bigger, much cleaner, much better-smelling bathroom in the airport BEFORE you got on a plane with 137 people and two lavs each the size of a postage stamp, but that was your call and we're fine with it.) So when flight attendants make a PA announcement that the seat belt sign is on, and the captain has requested passengers remain seated and respect his infinitely stronger knowledge of both aviation safety in general and today's weather/flying conditions in particular, it is hoped that people will do so.
But many people do not. Which puts flight attendants in a terrible position. In addition to be be there for your safety, the vast majority of flight attendants want to be there for your comfort as well. We want happy passengers. Happy passengers make our jobs easier. (Sleeping passengers even more so.) The vast majority of us really want you to enjoy your flight, and will do what's possible within the rules (of the FAA) and the regulations (of The Company) to ensure that. However, some situations are such that flight attendants are forced to step in and enforce a rule, either for a person's own safety, the safety of someone else in the vicinity, or to maintain the integrity of the flight deck door. Which mostly boils down to having to tell a passenger not to do something they want to do.
Now on to poor Steven.
The rest of the anonymous flight attendant's email after the jump...