The news from the cockpit is of the least reassuring variety. ‘Brace, brace,’ says the captain out of nowhere in disarmingly calm tones.
‘Brace! Brace!’ I shriek at the rows of passengers facing me and place my hands behind my head and close my forearms over my ears. I make the rookie mistake of interlocking my fingers, but never mind, the captain has fresh instructions.
‘Attention, crew at stations.’ At this, I unstrap myself from the four-point seatbelt they make flight attendants wear, leap to my feet and bob around, making important checks.
I shoot glances down the cabin to see if anyone requires urgent assistance. I ensure that my fellow crew member on the starboard side is still in the game.
And I peer out of the porthole in the cabin door to take stock of the environment in which we have landed. Admittedly, I’m unsure exactly what I’m checking for. Sharks in the water? A desert island within paddling distance?
The captain interrupts my ruminations with his most urgent command yet. ‘Evacuate. Unfasten your seatbelts and get out.’
Jonathan Brocklebrank joins candidates in the easyJet flight crew training
Our man Jonathan whizzes down the evacuation chute diligently and in great style
‘Unfasten your seatbelts and GET OUT!’ I roar at the passengers, repeating the message as I wrestle with the cabin door. When it jolts open, a mechanical noise indicates the inflatable slide is deploying.
Having just told a planeload of survivors to flee for their lives, I now thrust my open palm out and bawl ‘Stand back! Stand back!’ until it is safe for them to exit.
When the chute is ready, I urge them to come forward again. ‘Jump! Jump!’ I yell at each in turn as they hurl themselves into an uncertain future.
A smattering of applause from those still sitting in rows one to three signals the end of this air emergency.
In reality, no one left their seats; no inflatable slide deployed. Our ‘plane’ is a static replica in a training facility at Gatwick Airport.
‘Well, how did I do?’ I ask easyJet cabin crew instructor Stella Pizzoferrato. She is mostly encouraging.
My gravest error was forgetting to hold onto the wall handle as I ushered imaginary passengers out of the door.
If this were real, the stampede for the exit would likely have pushed me out of the aircraft and onto the slide – or worse, over the side of it – before I had completed my evacuation duties.
Minutes earlier, Francesca Hicks, 62, and Race Welch, 64, had delivered rather more polished performances. In fairness, they did have a head start on me.
They have already been in training for a fortnight as two of the first to respond to an easyJet cabin crew recruitment drive aimed at the over-50s.
As the airline’s director of cabin services Michael Brown declared at the launch of the campaign to attract more mature flight attendants last year: ‘Being cabin crew can be a job for anyone with the skills, no matter their age.’
Jonathan and the other canddidates receive cabin training in the ground simulator
Well, I am 57 and a long-time observer of easyJet safety demonstrations.
I have heard the ‘seatbelts fastened, armrests down, tray tables up’ spiel so many times I probably recite it in my sleep.
Would I have what it took to become air crew of a certain age?
If I did, would I want the gig? Didn’t the glamour disappear from this job in around 1975?
Where once the stopovers in exotic locations could be days long, in the era of budget air travel they often last barely an hour, during which time the crew must stay in the plane and clean it.
Then there are the less congenial passengers: the boorish ones, the drunk ones, the over-fragrant ones, the screaming infant ones. All in all, doesn’t age and wisdom render this employment opportunity a non-starter?
Clearly not for sexagenarian Ms Hicks from London. ‘As soon as I heard about it, I thought, “How do I apply for this?” and I was straight on the laptop,’ she tells me. ‘I’ve applied for so many jobs that I knew I was capable of doing but when they look through your CV, they look at your age and they’re just like, “You’re too old”.’
Should she make it through the training process, how long would she propose to stay in the job? ‘Twenty years,’ she says immediately. ‘My grandmother is 102.’
Day one of the course plonks the candidates into a swimming pool where they must prove they can swim at least one length of it. They must also be able to tread water and, while wearing a life jacket, swim up to an inflatable raft and clamber in.
‘There’s no graceful way of doing it,’ admits training manager Michael Leathem.
Failure, however, is career-ending for aspiring cabin crew. In the current tranche of candidates, only one didn’t make it through swimming pool day.
By the time I join them, they have covered the safety points in standard operating procedure and now they are training to handle full-blown catastrophes.
Lessons begin in the fire and smoke trainer, a steel cargo container which has been kitted out to resemble a section of aircraft. Various areas of it are set alight – the seat cushion, the overhead compartment, the toilet – and, one by one, we march in with our fire-extinguishers to tackle the flames. In her 17 years as cabin crew, instructor Katie Phillips tells me, she never saw a fire onboard an aircraft but, clearly, you can’t be too careful.
Which is why we move next to the room where a ‘sawn-off’ plane sits sunken into the floor so that you enter it without climbing any steps. Its interior exactly resembles a standard issue Airbus A320, which is what makes the emergency scenario so believable.
In this one, the pilot has been forced to crash land or ditch on water and cabin crew must manage the evacuation in line with commands from the cockpit.
Are there any circumstances in which cabin crew can decide for themselves when to evacuate?
Oh yes, in a ‘catastrophic’ safety event where, for example, a fire is blazing out of control on board or there is severe structural damage to the aircraft, flight attendants need not await instructions from the cockpit.
But this has never happened on any easyJet flight. Nor have any of our trainers ever had to tell passengers, ‘Unfasten your seatbelts and get out!’ or ‘Jump!’ on any real flight.
‘The majority of the course is focused on dealing with the things that, hopefully, you will never have to deal with,’ says Mr Leathem.
Such as the next scenario I must handle. Our plane has ditched and the ‘power assist’ mechanism on the front cabin door has malfunctioned. We must open it with brute force.
I feel nervous for the slightly built Ms Hicks as she takes her turn on door duties. Will this prove her undoing? Others have already expressed surprise at how heavy it is.
She marches up and thrusts it open with ease. I manage to do so too but neglect to push it all the way until it locks in the open position.
It means that, as they made their escape from the aircraft, my passengers would likely have been crushed by the wind slamming the door shut on them.
We move next to our classroom where candidates are shown a short film about British Airtours Flight 28M which was supposed to fly from Manchester to Corfu on August 22, 1985.
It never took off. Instead an engine caught fire, the flames spread to the fuselage, the cabin filled with choking smoke and 55 people died before they could be evacuated. ‘Why do you think we are showing you that video?’ asks one of our instructors.
The answer, it turns out, is not to test candidates’ resolve in pursuing careers in aviation but to underline exactly why safety must remain at the forefront of cabin crews’ minds.
Candidates are invited to comment on what went wrong. The answer is pretty much everything. Indeed, this disaster prompted an industry-wide aviation safety overhaul which forms the basis of modern protocols.
We cover ‘rejected take-offs’ – where the departing aircraft never leaves the ground, often due to a technical problem or a runway blockage – and ‘rejected landings’ or ‘go-arounds’ as they are known to cabin crew.
Ms Phillips reels off the standard announcement to passengers alarmed to find the plane ascending again, sometimes having come within a few feet of the runway.
‘For operational reasons the captain has considered it necessary to climb back up rather than continue the landing on this occasion. This is a completely normal procedure and is not a cause for concern.’
A video showing several ‘go-arounds’ is played to ensure candidates get the idea. In one, the aircraft descends lopsided in high winds until the landing gear on the starboard side makes contact with the runway. Then, terrifyingly, it takes off again. How completely normal is that?
The day’s training concludes with another mandatory exercise: the inflatable slide. The idea is you go down sitting upright, legs stretched straight out and hands gripping your clothing – or life jacket – around the collar area.
The fifty and sixty-somethings take to the chute like kids at a funfair. ‘Can I go again?’ says one.
It has been fun being put through our disaster paces but, I ask our training manager, what about more commonplace problems in the skies?
Every year easyJet sees its share of drunken passengers causing mayhem at 40,000ft. In an extreme case last February, staff had to restrain a man on a Glasgow to Lisbon flight who, after over-imbibing, was shouting and swearing that he would kill them.
There are regular reports of planes being diverted to the nearest available airport to offload drunks into the hands of the local police. In the real world of air crew, aren’t they the clear and present danger?
‘We train for being able to handle disruptions,’ says Mr Leathem. ‘Be that a flight delay, a flight cancellation and then, sometimes, as a result of that, disruptive behaviour or people who are maybe under the influence of alcohol and how to manage that situation.’
In an ideal world, he suggests, it is best managed on the ground by preventing inebriated passengers from boarding.
Later on in the four-week course, candidates will be drilled in sales techniques. It’s worth their while to listen, because they can top up their earnings by several thousand pounds a year with the commission they make on sales of shop items and duty-free goods.
Then, in the final week, they will perfect their pre-take-off safety demonstration.
Those taking part in the course will be hoping to take to the skies with the company
‘The safety demo is really important because, after boarding, it’s the first interaction customers have with cabin crew,’ says Mr Leathem. ‘So, whilst it’s a safety-critical element, we want to give them a great customer experience, so the crew should be smiling and their body language as relaxed as it can be.’
The ideal candidates, he suggests, have ‘great interpersonal skills’.
They are communicators who build a rapport with customers mainly to help them enjoy their flight but also to ensure passengers do exactly what they are told in an emergency.
Could it be that easyJet’s overtures to the 50-plus demographic are a tribute to our communication skills?
I briefly ponder the pros and cons of a late career change. Cons: travelling the world but not being able to get off the plane to explore it.
Pros: more than generous staff discounts on flights during your holidays.
An hour later, in Gatwick’s departure lounge, a sozzled Glaswegian breaks into a song of love for his football club before lurching off to find his gate, which I pray is not the same one as mine.
How I feel for the cabin crew, should he be allowed on a plane.
It is then and there I decide that, whoever else in my age group easyJet may be looking for, it ain’t me.
