There, the frisky flight attendants rule the roost, though for much of the time they mostly just mix and guzzle drinks, gossip about everyone else and serve as a kind of bawdy, sort of naughty, progressively more belabored and unfunny gay Greek chorus.
The airline changed its flight attendants' work rules last week, to save $40 million a year, and it will meet again with unionized pilots Friday, though not to negotiate.
Many airlines give flight attendants no explicit rules about when they should intervene, leaving it to the crew's discretion.
This is where flight attendants and airline rules become your most powerful allies.
In an interview last year, Stacy K. Martin, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 556, which represents more than 10,000 flight attendants, said the current rules were too stringent and flight attendants did not want to police passengers.
An attendant pointed to a rule forbidding the presence of growing cotton on the floor as constituting a fire hazard.
In coach, where travelers mix the drinks themselves, some attendants invent their own rules — "I can only sell you one drink an hour".
But like the pilots, the flight attendants did not rule out agreeing to concessions, particularly if the airline moves quickly to replace the interim chief executive, John W. Creighton, with a permanent chief executive.
Next morning he was back early, but he'd hardly more than laid out his papers when an attendant told him that the rules didn't permit anyone just to sit there and write.
