FA's Break the Rules, Even at 30,000 Feet

From joining the mile-high club to short-changing passengers, air stewards have admitted just how often they break the rules while they are in the sky. Lying to passengers about the availability of duty free products, and accepting tips and gifts are also high on the list of misdemeanours to which they have confessed.



A survey of 718 British air stewards aged 18 and over who are currently in the job or have been in the past five years found that 89 per cent said they had broken airline rules during a flight.

When they were asked what rules they had broken, more than a fifth - 21 per cent - said they had "indulged in sexual relations with a colleague during a flight" while 14 per cent said they had had in-flight sexual encounters with passengers.
The most common "crime" was lying about the availability of products in the in-flight shopping catalogue, presumably because of laziness (28 per cent) while one in five had short-changed passengers.

Asked how much they thought they had pocketed from short-changing passengers per month, the answers averaged out at $360 per year.

More than half (54 per cent) said they had given change in a different currency to hoodwink passengers, while 40 per cent said they had got away with it simply because "most passengers don’t check their change". However, German crews are even more dishonest.

A further seven per cent of cabin crew said they had accepted tips and gifts from passengers, which is against company rules for their airlines.