Tenner-Riff-Raff.

We've had a little jaunt away! Two days in Tenerife visiting a friend we used to fly with who now lives there and has a fashion shop. It was an absolute last minute decision, which is always good,
and guess what! We, yes, WE! had to pay full fare! Outrageous cheek, not a bargain to be had anywhere on the web, and no air crew discounts available. Disgraceful.

We are very spoiled, we have a great deal going on with staff travel, and we like to make the most of it. Alright, over the years we've kicked the arse out of it proper, we once went on hoilday to Thailand for ten days and it cost £118 for the flights and the hotel! And about £800 in spends on clothes and bags, but who's counting? What a bargain, it was fab and we came back totally happy and chilled. We used to slip away for a weekend regularly, but we've been too busy lately to do much of it, so Tenerife was a nice surprise. It's a beautiful island, and the islanders are lovely friendly people.

So we booked a last minute flight on the internet, and travelled with a nice charter airline based here in the UK from our local airport. They are a fairly big company, and have a good name for friendly staff and being very on-time. The thing that shocked us though were the passengers on board. We were actually ashamed. The were the worst dressed, most bad mannered, rude and scruffy bunch of people to ever be granted passports. There were more than two hundred people on the aircraft, and those you could class as decent could have been counted on one hand. We're
going to describe in no uncertain terms why they were so horrible, and why we felt that the lovely Spanish folk they were about to descend on must have been scared. Many of them were fat, badly out of shape, but wearing clothes that made their flab look worse, belly tops, hipsters and silky football shorts and shirts. Fair enough if you are big and descreet about it, but why think that everyone wants to admire the blubber? And why do chavvy Brits abroad think everyone wants to know what team they support? It's like a comfort blanket to belong to a football gang, probably because they realise they are so common and unsophisticated, they will stand out like a sore thumb on the Continent for being scuffs so they advertise they are a bit tough and hard, so don't take the piss! We take the piss because they do this, it has the opposite effect to the one they hope. Britain is getting very common now, to be greedy, ignorant, stupid, aggressive, ugly and pointless is actually ok! Never has political correctness benefited such a revolting group of people so much, no one can say a word against these types. The lunatics really are taking over the asylum.

Many had hideous home made tattoos, they had tons of nasty cheap gold jewellery dangling from every available nook and cranny, the men had shaved heads showing off a collection of motley looking scars, and the women had blobby bird shite highlights, and twisted expressions of bad attitude. They were horrible to their own kids, snarling at them, smacking them and generally being aggressive in every way. There were two stag parties and two hen parties on board, fair enough, all good fun and happy times. Until that is, a fight broke out between a stag and a hen, who until that moment had been getting off with each other, her cackling with laughter as he commented on the tattoo on her tit, asking for a shag. The language plummeted to the level of this thing, purporting to be a female, screaming "F**k off, or I'll get me C**t out and really f**king frighten yer!" in front of everyone. We don't know if she was kidding or not. Me and Jue just sat there shocked.

The poor crew were battered from one end of that aircraft to the other. Lots of things went wrong for them. They sold the headsets you need to watch the movie, me and Jue got one each to watch Dreamgirls with Beyonce, but although the movie was playing the sound wasn't coming out. We had sympathy, when your IFE (In Flight Entertainment) goes down, it's a right disaster. On our long haul it means the crew will be tormented for hours, as without the distraction some passengers get really demanding. Suddenly, after a couple of apologetic PA's from the Supervisor, the soundtrack boomed at full volume round the cabin to the level where we couldn't speak to each other, we felt so sorry for the crew. They eventually managed to switch off the whole system, but not before some passengers had bellowed at them, demanding the headset money back and being really unpleasant. While all this was going on, some crew were trying to serve the bar and being pummelled relentlessly with massive bar orders, having their clothes pulled and being snapped at and insulted for how long it was taking. They were constantly having to push the trolleys back and forth to let passengers pass to go to the toilets, and we then found out that the onboard tills were faulty and they were having to do everything manually. Nightmare.

The queues at the loos were ridiculous, the crew couldn't work for them. Loads of people were standing up in the aisle, and letting kids roam free, very stupid and dangerous to some one trying to drag an enormous trolley along. The stupid passengers were constantly pressing the call bells, moaning about how long it was taking to get a drink, further disturbing the crew and slowing them down even more. One idiotic woman near us hammered the call bell and when the Stewardess came down, having to leave her bar and picking her way over the plebs in the aisle, she told her that "She feels sick, get us a sick bag or somemut." (Slang for something.) The Hostie got her bags and cloths, and told her to take the little girl to the toilet in case she was ill. About ten minutes later, Jue, to her despair, had to join the loo queue at the front and when she got there, the Stewardess was just attempting to bring the trolley back in after two hours of hideous bar service, Jue said she looked like she'd done ten rounds but she was still smiling and polite. The woman came out of the loo with the child, said to the Stewardess, "She never made it!" and pointed to a load of sick splattered over the catering boxes in the galley and all over the crew seat. Then she pushed past her, dragging the child, and left the poor girl to clean it up in the midst of all this bedlam. Jue got hand towels out of the loo and felt awfully sorry for her, and as she was on her hands and knees trying to clean it up, ignorant passengers were stepping over her back to the toilet, and crowding the tiny galley tutting and muttering.

They then had to serve a hot meal, and one of the ovens had failed so they had a right carry on swapping the racks around. The passengers were snatching the food off them and then complaining because the tea and coffee were slow coming. They never even said please or thank you, it seemed to have escaped their notice that there were over two hundred of them and just five crew to do all this service. It was disgusting to witness and me and Jue gushed with politeness to make up for the lack of manners from the rest of the Scroat Army on board. It was a hot, hassled, stressful, horrible flight for those lovely people working as crew, and on leaving the aircraft we heard one evil old bitch, her leather chest bearing a collection of medallions nestling in her drooping bosoms say 'That was the worst flight we've ever had!" right in the Supervisors face. We said "Thank you for working so hard, and for all you've done." We never said we were crew, but we made the girl beam and say thanks back, but she just looked so weary and stressed as she said "That was the worst flight I've done in ten years, but thanks for being nice!"

So it's very hard when things go wrong, cabin crew are amazing people to cope with these things and we are very proud of them. To stand on an aircraft and look around you and realise that things are going badly and you cannot take a break from it but must continue doing your best, can make you hate flying and long for a desk job with no responsibility. Until that is, the chance to apply for one comes up, and then thinking of the laughs, camaraderie and good times, you'd rather stick pins in your eyeballs than give up flying!