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The Documentary: Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase

The Documentary: Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase

Illustration of an air hostess

15/10/2013 GMT

Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase, Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase

Insight into the airline industry with air hostess Betty Thesky

Air hostess Betty Thesky shares the weird, wonderful, and wacky things that happen on a plane at 35,000 feet.

“Anything that can happen on earth, at some point happens in the sky.”
 
Betty Thesky (not her real name) has worked as a flight attendant for the past 25 years. It was always her dream job, as the ‘golden ticket’ of free flight allowed her to escape her humble beginnings in Pennsylvania and see the world in style. She’s lost count of the number of countries she’s visited, but she’s lost none of the wide-eyed wonder that originally fuelled her desire to travel.
 
An average day at work can see her meeting and greeting nearly 1,000 people, all travelling for different reasons, and all with different needs, wants and personalities. On the whole, she finds people a delight – but despairs when someone will interrupt an on-board medical emergency to ask her for a diet coke or an extra pat of butter.
 
But what’s it really like to travel so far, so often? Does the glamour of Paris fade after your 20th visit? How do you spend your leisure time in Dublin when you only have five hours free? Can you really get to know a place when you’re picked up from the airport, ferried to an anonymous hotel, and then whisked back to the airport the next morning?
 
Betty’s industry has changed too. Flight attendants are trained more in sales now than in service. Passengers, in turn, have become somewhat immune to the ‘miracle’ of flight – and act and dress accordingly. Betty misses the ‘golden era’ of airline travel, when becoming a stewardess was a true aspiration. 
 
Yet despite the often mundane routine, and in spite of everything the passengers throw at her, Betty insists that she never entirely feels at home unless she’s 35,000 feet in the air.
 
In “Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase”, we join Betty as she travels to London, Brussels and Barcelona.

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