-Had you told me growing up,
"You're going to be a flight attendant,"
I would have thought you were crazy.
-Well, it was supposed to be a summer job, got in my blood,
and it's something that I can't imagine my life without.
-There's just nothing like it.
We saw the wave of the shut down of the flying to Asia,
and then the shut down of the flying to Europe.
And none of this was done
in any sort of orchestrated or organized way.
-The government started issuing the "shelter in place" orders,
travel just stopped.
-There was not enough flying for everyone,
and it happened in the blink of an eye.
-It's very frightening to see an industry
that you work for in such trouble.
-To not know what's gonna happen with your life
in a few months is really, really tough.
-I went from a full schedule in April to literally no flying.
-I was flying about 100 hours a month.
I think in March, I was home,
like, five nights out of the entire month.
-What normal salary is depends on me flying,
so, you know, I'm not flying, so I'm losing per diem.
-If you're taking a flight attendant who religiously flies
200 hours a month
and you're reducing them down to a 71-hour window,
that's a huge reduction in the amount
of take home pay that they have.
And if they rely on that income every month,
you know, that's putting them in a very tight financial spot.
-We're flight attendants.
Weather happens, cancels happen, so we're used to changing.
But this is such a drastic change,
and the rules for flying are changing every day.
-I feel like in some ways, flight attendants
have been a little bit forgotten in this.
And I know my co-workers feel the same way.
You know, every time we come to work,
we are also putting our lives at risk,
we're risking contamination,
we're risking bringing it home to our families.
And we're doing this because we know the vital role
that we play in the economy and the aviation industry.
We know if we don't come to work, those planes
don't potentially take off.
And we're coming to work to make sure
that if you need to travel, if you have to travel,
that you can get to your destination safely.
-We still need to provide essential service
to all of our communities.
It's how much of the goods and services get to our communities,
and it's how important essential personnel get there
to help fight the virus, as well.
-As repetitive as our job on the airplane actually is,
no two flights or days are ever the same,
and that's probably the most enjoyable part for me.
-You bond, and you become like a little mini family,
and you make plans for your layover, you know,
to go get breakfast or to go to the gym together.
You have jump seat therapy,
where you just talk about your life with a random stranger.
And it's an incredible
amount of camaraderie on board the aircraft.
So I miss my co-workers.
-I'm not used to being in one spot for so long.
And now I've been here for over a month, and I'm so antsy.
Like, I just want to go somewhere.
Like, I miss flying so much.
-We see acts of kindness every single day,
and we often don't get to talk about these things,
but the truth is that I miss that sense of community,
and I miss experiencing
that sense that we're all in this together.
It's a really big thing
to get this big, metal tube up in the air.
And a lot of people still see it as magic.
-We get to share some really incredible moments with people,
whether they're traveling on a vacation
that they've saved for for years or they're going for a wedding.
And, you know, we're there for some of the harder times, too,
whether we're seeing military members
who are heading out for deployment or people
traveling for a funeral or, you know, a family emergency.
And those are the moments where we get to be there for them,
we get to have a human moment, interact with them,
to support them in some way and be a part of,
you know, bringing people together.
-We understand the critical role that we're playing
for our nation right now in going to work.
We are providing an essential service through aviation.
And yet, we also don't have access
to the same amount of work.
So we are both concerned about our jobs
and the economic impact here and the fact that actually
there's not even enough work for us.
But we also don't have a choice.
When we get the call to come to work, we have to go
because air travel is an essential service right now
and is a part of actually fighting this virus.