On our summer trip to Southeast Asia Kim, Lucas and I got to fly business class which was very nice. Our flight went from New York to Cairo (JFK-CAI) on Egypt Airlines. In Cairo we then transferred to our flights on Singapore Air.
While the service on Egypt Air wasn’t great, something (service related) caught my attention.
At the beginning of the flight the flight attendants handed out a sticker sheet to business class passengers. These stickers served an interesting purpose. Rather than be disturbed while relaxing or sleeping you could place one of the stickers at the top of your seat to let the flight attendants know your preferences.
The stickers would let the flight attendants know to:
- Wake me for Duty Free
- Do not disturb
- Wake me for meals
I thought it was a pretty smart idea to use something as simple as a sticker to let the flight attendants know what preferences you had during the flight. Why miss a meal if you wanted it or be woken if you didn’t?
Kim and I have only flown business class a few times and have never seen this sticker system before.
I wonder if other airlines use stickers or have a similar system in place to let flight attendants know whether or not you want to be woken or left to sleep during a flight?
If you haven’t read Jerry Seinfeld’s first book, he complained about flight attendants waking him up for meals. About the time that book was published, my dad, having retired from his career but still wanting to work, became a flight attendant for at AA. He said that they were instructed to whisper to sleeping passengers, not loud enough to wake them up, but just in case they were awake and might want a meal. So, one day Seinfeld was on his flight and he whispered “Mr. Seinfeld, would you like your meal?” Seinfeld’s eyes immediately opened and he said “You haven’t read my book, have you?”