Cabin crew have a discreet method of alerting colleagues when there’s an attractive passenger aboard.
Whilst navigating the narrow aisles at 30,000 feet with refreshment trolleys, there’s limited opportunity for manoeuvring or chatting about which travellers have captured their attention. This is precisely why flight attendants employ two coded expressions to signal their romantic interest.
“If you hear them refer to someone as ‘Bob’, they are using the secret acronym ‘babe on board’. When you are disembarking from the aircraft, if the flight attendant says ‘cheerio’ to you this could also be code they have a secret crush!” a flight attendant, who asked to remain anonymous, told eShores.
“We always run back to the galley and let the rest of the crew know where the sexy passenger is sat. We will be extra nice to them and give them freebies. I can confirm phone numbers have definitely been written on napkins!”, reports the Mirror.
Sherry Martin Peters, an experienced cabin crew member and founder of Atlas + Wild AtlasAndWild.com, is eager for travellers to understand that beneath their professional facade, she and her colleagues live fascinating lives that are occasionally less glamorous than one might imagine.
“I’ve been an international flight attendant for 26 years, and passengers only see the smiling, polished version of us-but there’s an entirely different reality behind that image,” she told the Mirror. “We speak in acronyms because airline lingo becomes its own mother tongue. Trips aren’t described by days, but by city: ‘I’m flying Athens this month.’ Casually mentioning having lunch in New York, then breakfast in Paris is not bragging – it’s just Tuesday and it’s our normal. Confusing to outsiders, yes. You may start to understand it, and even speak our language to some extent if you are married to us, or are close friends.
“Our geography is fluid. Our bodies no longer belong to a single time zone. So we build rituals to feel grounded – even when we’re 35,000 feet above it.”
There are numerous other secret codes that cabin crew use when discreetly discussing passengers amongst themselves. They include:
- Mermaid – A playful yet passive-aggressive nickname for a passenger who deliberately sprawls out across empty seats to deter others from sitting in their row.
- Code 300 or Angel – These indicate that someone has died on board.
- ABP – translates to ‘able-bodied passengers’. These are individuals that the crew seek out just in case of an emergency.
- Gate Lice – This term refers to passengers, often inexperienced flyers, who crowd around or line up at a gate at an airport, completely blocking the boarding area and preventing First and Business Class passengers from getting on the plane when they’re allowed to.
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