Do you know that your flight crew is usually flying together for the first time? It may not seem obvious at first sight, but flight attendants often work with a constantly rotating group of coworkers. However, despite this fact, they always do their best to provide excellent service to each passenger aboard.

Bright Side collected 9 answers to the questions you’ve always wanted to ask flight attendants.

9. What’s the grossest thing on planes?

Most flight attendants admit that they would never drink hot water, plain tea, or plain coffee on the plane. The water used to make your beverage is the same potable water that goes through the bathroom system, so it probably isn’t very clean.

Conducted tests proved that aircraft water fails the EPA’s standards for water safety as it contains potentially harmful bacteria. So if you do get a drink, make sure it’s not tea or coffee and opt for bottled water.

8. Is it really necessary to turn your mobile phone off on a plane?

According to regulations, the use of portable electronic devices is not allowed below 3,000 m. You can use your laptop or music player above this height, but your phone must remain turned off during the whole flight.

However, nobody, even the crew members, actually turns off their phones on a plane. Flight attendants admit that this rule is more an exercise in caution — mobile electronic devices can’t really bring an airplane down. But your phones may be annoying to pilots, so it’s better to turn them off anyway.

7. How does a flight attendant get revenge on annoying passengers?

Sometimes being a flight attendant may be really hard because they are expected to deal with a rude or disruptive person calmly and with a smile. However, there are plenty of ways they can get revenge, and some of them are so subtle you won’t even notice that something’s wrong.

The most common practice is just ignoring annoying passengers. But if someone is being particularly obnoxious, they can take some additional measures like pouring a tiny amount of alcohol in your drinks with tons of soda or juice or even adding laxatives to them.

6. What is the biggest pet peeve of a flight attendant?

Clipping your toenails, going to the bathroom with no shoes on (while there’s definitely not water on the ground), changing a poopy diaper on the tray table, repeatedly passing gas, putting your feet on the armrest of the seat in front of you, placing your oversized bags in the overhead compartment so that it doesn’t close — all these things can really annoy a flight attendant.

Besides that, most of the crew members admit that they may get offended if you don’t greet them when stepping on the plane.

5. What happens when someone gets really sick during a flight?

According to flight attendants, the most common medical situations on a plane involve diabetics who haven’t had anything to eat or drink. So if somebody gets really sick, the crew communicates with a medical company on the ground who advise them on exactly what to do and whether to divert the plane or to continue on.

As for more serious cases, no one officially passes away during a flight as the crew doesn’t pronounce this fact out loud. If there is a corpse cupboard on a plane, a discreet locker next to one of the plane’s exit doors, they may move a deceased passenger there. But usually, they try to find a row of seats with few travelers nearby where they can place the body and cover it in a dignified manner.

4. How does the job affect relationships?

When you become a flight attendant, you always have problems with explaining your working schedule to your close ones — they don’t always understand why you have to give up big holidays with your family or try to find other ways to celebrate them.

If you start dating someone who doesn’t know what this business is like, it can certainly put stress on your relationships. It’s estimated that the mortality rate of relationships between a cabin crew and an outsider is much higher than between 2 cabin crew members as there could be a lot of opportunities for jealousy and trust issues because of the inability to spend time together.

3. Can flight attendants sleep during a long-haul flight?

Of course, flight attendants are humans too, and they need to rest in order to perform their duties properly. So after having served all the passengers, they start taking breaks — half of the crew heads to their rest bunks while the others continue to work.

The small crew bunks are usually situated up a spiral staircase in the tail of the plane or somewhere in the middle of it and they give airline attendants a chance to sleep, listen to music, or just relax.

2. Do flight attendants eat the airplane food?

The crew members are usually provided with their own meals by airline catering services. However, the majority of flight attendants always get some food from home, especially if it’s a long flight since they know that aircraft food is high in salt and oil which is not really healthy to consume on a daily basis.

1. How thoroughly does the airplane get cleaned?

Have you learned any new information about flight attendants? What else would you like to know about their life? Tell us your opinions in the comments!