Being a first year flight attendant, it was pretty much a given that I would be working on Christmas. With that being said, I still tried everything in my power to at least have the eve, morning or afternoon of Christmas off to be with family. This is a little story of how it went down, and how none of that worked out, but it still ended up as one of my favorite work trips.
I was scheduled to be “on call” for six days in a row, beginning on December 20, so that left me with hopes of having a chance of Christmas at home. The trip started out dull – but ended up being great.
Day one: I was assigned “standby” (on-call at the airport) and got sent somewhere I can’t even remember. I was sick with a cold and slept the entirety of my first layover.
Day two: things started to look up. I had the pleasure of being flown to Grand Cayman where it was about 80 degrees and a perfect chance for me to recover from the cold.
(I should mention the two crews I worked with here were the sweetest. Working with people like them makes the whole idea of flying over the holidays easy to forget.)
When we arrived in Grand Cayman, our hotel was a resort right on the beach. Even though our layover was only 11 hours, the last thing I wanted was to sleep or stay inside all night. The pilots invited me and the two other flight attendants to grab pina coladas with them by the beach, so of course we said yes. We spent the whole night playing Jenga together as a crew and feeling like we were on a tropical vacation.
We had to get up early for our flight the next day, but I made sure to go out on the beach to witness the sunrise first.
The next trip I was given while “on call” was out to join a Seattle-based crew. They were the absolute nicest flight attendants and it was really cool to fly with people from another base. That doesn’t happen too often.
On this trip, I was happy because I was *scheduled* to get home by noon on Christmas day. They were going to lay me over (give me a hotel) in Seattle on Christmas Eve and then deadhead me home (fly me home in a seat like a passenger) early Christmas morning. It was perfect.
But… of course… too good to be true!
Seattlers got a beautiful White Christmas with about a foot of snow overnight, which meant my flight home to Atlanta was delayed and then they changed my schedule to have me work (not deadhead) a different flight home that afternoon. That got me home around 10pm, missing most of Christmas and spending it alone in a hotel and then on a plane.
HOWEVER, I was still pretty happy…
I had nothing to complain about because I knew from day one that I would be working on Christmas. I was only hoping for a miracle to be home earlier. But in the end, I got to experience pina coladas by the beach one night, and a White Christmas the next. Who can complain about that?
It was a Christmas I’ll always remember.
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