A flight attendant has shared the bizarre moment a passenger on a short flight asked for something completely unexpected—the attendant’s jacket.
Liz, 29, from South Carolina, has been a flight attendant for 18 months and often shares anecdotes from her job on TikTok. In one recent video that has been viewed more than 354,000 times, she recounted the unusual moment that left her lost for words. "Last night, I had a lady ask me if we had blankets and I said, 'No, I'm so sorry.' We don't have them on domestic flights. Also, it was a 49-minute flight," Liz, who didn’t give a surname, said in the clip. "She said: ‘OK, can I use your jacket?’"
At first, Liz thought the woman meant her own jacket from the overhead compartment. "No," Liz said. "Yeah, can I use that as a blanket? I just walked away."
Despite being taken aback, Liz said she kept her composure and continued to serve the passenger later in the flight as if nothing had happened. "I was stunned into silence. I did not respond but happily served her a beverage during service like nothing happened," Liz told Newsweek.
While the request was unusual, Liz said that strange interactions come with the territory of working in the sky. "Being a flight attendant, you get lots of wild questions. I share lots of fun things about my job because I love my career, even when it’s silly or stressful," she added.
As of May 2024, there were about 130,800 flight attendants employed in the U.S. according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). With an average salary of $67,130 per year, an estimated 19,800 openings for flight attendants are projected each year.
Internet Reacts
The TikTok video sparked hundreds of comments from other workers in customer-facing roles, who shared their own eyebrow-raising experiences.
One user, @Chrome, wrote: "She had audacity but you could have said no, it’s my uniform and also … it’s cold, I need it."
Another, @Jilan, added: "I once gave a passenger my sweater because she was cold and when I asked for it back before landing she reached down and took it off her feet! Never again!"
Others chimed in with similarly shocking requests. User @QuietlyLeaving posted: "One time a passenger asked me for my tweezers so they could dig out a chunk of earwax. I'm sorry what. No."
Meanwhile, @Taco’s Mom joked: "My toxic trait is that I’d want a full explanation of how she got to the point in her life where she felt this was an appropriate question."
Commenter @BoriPaseo shared: "Some people should be banned from flying based on entitlement level."
