Sunday, April 10, 2011

Bahama Pairing

Sometimes I find it really funny to see the different types of people I get to work with. Sometimes you make amazing friends and other times you just never want to work with them ever again. The crews out of Vancouver are awesome. However, I have made awesome friends out of Calgary.

So this pairing that I just did with a Nassau, Bahamas layover was pretty interesting. The second day of the pairing, as we flew into Toronto from Winnipeg, we had to do a crew change. I bumped into someone whom I have had a bad confrontation with back in January. This person had handled a certain situation that had to do with me by yelling at me in front of a bunch of people. Anyway, as I saw him and I tried so hard to hide my face but did not go as well. He noticed it was me and apologized for how bad he had treated me. I accepted the apology and appreciated it. It was a bit awkward though. The pairing I had with him back in January was terrible. I did not have a good crew but luckily I had amazing floaters. Floaters are Flight Attendants who get added onto our crew but who do not necessarily stay for the entire pairing. They are normally there to cover the amount of passengers on board since we require 4 Flight Attendants if there are more than 120 passengers.

Once we got to the Bahamas it was great. We all went over to the Daiquiri Shack across from our hotel where they make real fruit smoothie blends with a lot of rum in it. You pick three types of fruits and they have them all cut into pieces and just blend it all together with ice. Then they add the rum to it and if you want more rum the guy just keeps poring it into your glass. If you ever go down there make sure to buy only rum at the store since it's only about $10 per bottle.

We had an amazing time there playing volleyball. All sorts of people joined us to play. Some were from the UK and most from the US. I'm now back home with all sorts of bruises from playing. I'll be back there in about two weeks so stay tuned!

Friday, April 1, 2011

How Scheduling Works

I know the scheduling part of being a Flight Attendant is confusing for those who aren't working as an FA. This post will clarify that for you. So each month we get to submit a bit for the following month and also up to 3 following months.  These bids are composed of 14 slots and close on the 9th of every month. What I am able to bid for is days off, layovers, check-in/out time, length of pairing (1-5 days), etc... I tend to bid layovers as you have all seen. Then on the 20th of every month we get our schedules and if you ask anyone it is like Christmas every month. It doesn't stop there. We have this program called Flica and it allows us to trade, drop, and pick up shifts that other flight attendants have posted. It is a great system because you can reconstruct your entire schedule. I have posted my April schedule so you can see my pairings.