A Flight Attendant's Story

An eye opening excerpt:

Okay, this is serious stuff. I retired last month from American Airlines, after thirty years as a flight attendant. I did this mainly because I could not bear the safety infractions that were consistently ignored. Far too many times, aircraft were allowed to fly with passengers, although the logbook had serious malfunction issues regarding the aircraft, that were simply ignored by personnel in station after station.

On one of my last trips, the captain confided to me that the airplane we were taking en route from JFK to Buenos Aires should never have been allowed to leave the gate; there were so many broken systems with this particular 767, including a fuel guage that was busted. The pilots had a fuzzy idea how much fuel they had as we neared our destination, which would be very important information in case we had an emergency over the Amazon, or if several fly-bys were necessary if the landing gear were to malfunction, or if an unscheduled stop in another Latin American airport were called for.

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