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Louise Thomas

Editor

A former Virgin Atlantic flight attendant has claimed that influencers cause the most annoyance while on board a flight.

Skye Taylor, 49, from Southampton, spent 16 years working in the skies, starting her career off at budget airlines before working her way up to a position at the Richard Branson-founded airline.

“The main problems lie in the routes like Dubai and Las Vegas where you get the influencer type that maybe hasn’t paid full price. They could be quite difficult,” she told MailOnline.

“I think if you’re looking at superstars and people who can afford their tickets, they generally were lovely people and very respectful,” she claimed.

Taylor also revealed one situation where passengers in general, whether that’s those seated business or economy, can be hard to deal with, is when they consume alcohol on the flight and possibly take sleeping tablets, making them “act out of character.”

‘It’s very common for people in LA to take sleeping tablets, things like Valium, and then they would get on board and drink,” Taylor said.

“And that changes people’s characters. I think you just have to be vigilant with watching how things are going to change people’s behaviour.”

Taylor added that trying to maintain the peace in the aircraft cabin can be exhausting for the flight crew.

“You get very good service with Virgin Atlantic, and that takes a lot out of the crew, and to try and maintain control of the cabins and stuff like that is very, very difficult,” she told the website. “But, yeah, most of the time it was done properly - but it takes a lot out of you as well.”

While she said Virgin Atlantic offered her and the crew a lot of support while dealing with passenger incidents, she believes that budget airlines may not provide the same level of assistance to their attendants.

“With security, we were very well looked after, I’d say. But I do feel so sorry for the low-cost airline crew at the moment, who don’t seem to have the same backup that we got,” Taylor said.

“You see so many incidents now, most of them involving alcohol and the way people act on board... it seems to be encouraged at the moment, which is dangerous in itself.”

Yet half the battle, Taylor added, is that in emergency situations, they did not want to alarm other passengers mid-flight while dealing with security-related incidents or medical issues.

“You’re trying to provide good customer service. Myself alone, I’ve done CPR at 35,000 feet - dealing with that and having to run the aircraft at the same time, and not let that impact other passengers who might not even be aware what’s going on.”

For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast

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