Flying Eyes and Traveling Bears

When you step on an airplane and settle into your seat, you are probably unaware that much of what's being loading into the belly of the plane right beneath your feet isn't bags or items checked by fellow passengers on your flight. 

It's Air Cargo:  items that need to be shipped quickly from one destination to another.  I've seen flowers leaving Seattle, Salmon from Bellingham, boxes and boxes of computers being loaded in San Francisco, and voluminous amounts of U.S. Mail at virtually every destination in the country.  An airline's ability to fill its cargo bins on every flight can make a huge difference in its bottom line.

But there are occasionally a few other items "shipped" in the cabin that you never see.

One item that I would see as a flight attendant on a regular basis in the cabin is something you would probably never guess:  human body parts.  Primarily eyes.  The gate agent would come down just prior to boarding with a small cooler, usually solidly sealed with duct tape, and accompanying paperwork.  The paperwork would have details of where the item had started and who would pick it up at its final destination.  An airline employee was responsible for it at all times, signing the paperwork with their name and employee number.

On flights without food service, we would usually just place the cooler in a secure spot in an empty compartment in the galley or in the valet closet.  If the flight had a meal service and the galley was full, we would often place it under the extra pilot jumpseat in the cockpit.

When the flight arrived at the gate, the "A," or "Senior," flight attendant would usually disarm the emergency slide on their door (1L) and wait for the agent to open it from the outside.  As the agent opened the door, the first words out of their mouth would always be, "any specials?," meaning any passengers requiring special assistance.  They would have been notified about the eyes, but we would remind them, and they would sign the paperwork and take the cooler before anyone stepped off the plane.

The other item we used to see being transported in a similar, yet unofficial, fashion was what I called the "traveling bears."  They reached the height of their popularity in the 1990's.  A teacher of an elementary school class, usually in an attempt to bring home the idea of U.S. geography, would bring in a medium-sized stuffed animal, usually a bear, and add a small backpack or fanny pack that would contain a small notebook and a sheet of paper, often laminated, introducing the bear, maybe giving his/her name if the class gave one, and giving instructions on how to return the bear.

The instructions asked the crews to travel with the bear to as many different places as possible, take pictures,  and place them back in the bear's pack, if possible, and write anything about the bear's travels in the notebook.  The bears would typically travel for a couple of weeks and then be returned to a particularly city on a given date.  Some of these bears traveled so widely that they'd put Rick Steves to shame.

When you had one of these bears onboard, the crew would usually look through its backpack during a break to see where the bear had been.  Some crews would take pictures of the bears at famous landmarks and leave copies of them in the bear's backpack.  I'd see pictures of bears in front of, or on top of, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State building, the White House, the Trevi Fountain, Big Ben, the Golden Gate bridge or sitting at sporting events or taking in Broadway shows, and strapped into a seat in First Class with a cocktail.  These bears lived life in the fast lane.

I never took a bear on an overnight, but plenty of crews did.  I would write about their travels in their notebooks.  The bears were deemed a security risk after 9/11 and we never saw them again.  I would have loved to have been in one of those classes when the kids got their traveling bears back, and the teachers pulled out the stack of pictures and postcards from around the world, recording the bear's adventures over the past month.  I hope it inspired some of those kids to travel and see the world themselves.

Anytime one crew would take over a flight with through passengers (let's say my crew is waiting on the jetway in Philadelphia for a plane arriving from Boston, and we are working the same flight through to its final destination in San Francisco) continuing to another destination, the Senior or "A" flight attendants would have a short, informal briefing giving the incoming crew any information they needed to know about the plane or continuing passengers.  A typical conversation would go something like this:

"Hey guys!  You have quite a few thrus (passengers continuing on the same flight to the next destination), 2 chairs (passengers requesting a wheel chair to exit the plane), a UNAC (an unaccompanied minor - a child or children traveling without an adult), eyes in the cockpit and a bear in the forward galley.  Oh, yeah, and your aft coffee maker is inop (inoperative - broken).  Make sure they dump the biffys (empty the lavatories - you never wanted to push back on a long flight if the lavs hadn't been properly serviced).  Have a good flight!"

A third and final cargo item that I'd see in the cabin as a flight attendant only occurred on flights between Buffalo, New York and Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  And it had an incredible smell.

Our "short" overnight (the hotel we used on layovers shorter than 14 hours) hotel in Buffalo, New York was the famous, or infamous, Airways Hotel.

The old Airways hotel in Buffalo, New York.

The place was retro before it was built.  The rooms were small, the beds and sheets uncomfortable, the carpets filthy and the walls paper thin, but the staff was very accommodating to airline crews, something all crew members appreciate.

But the real attraction was the Irish pub, the Shannon, conveniently located on the first floor, right off the lobby.  And the meal everyone ate at the pub in the Airways was an order (or two) of their famous Buffalo wings.  I mean, crews just went crazy for them.  Some people would even admit to me they had bid the trip just for the overnight in Buffalo and the wings.  I've been a vegetarian for thirty years, so I never tried them.  But everyone else - and I mean everyone - couldn't get enough of them.

And that included airline employees, mostly guys working on the ramp, who had never even been to Buffalo.  They would call up the Airways Hotel from their break room at the airport in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, and place a large order of their coveted wings.  They would charge it to a credit card and tell them what flight to ship it on.

Then a few minutes before departure from Buffalo, some delivery guy from the Airways hotel would walk down the jetway to the front door of the plane with a large, brown bag of steaming buffalo wings from Buffalo.  We would stow them in an empty galley compartment, and then pass them along to a ramper or mechanic meeting the flight in PIT or PHL.  I saw this happen dozens of times.  I think this may have stopped after 9/11 as well, although I'd find it hard to believe that the Airways even survived into the 21st century.

I would love to stay around and chat, but I gotta' fly.  In this biz, you aren't making any money on the ground.