Lisa Wade informs us that “on any given flight anywhere in the world, most flight attendants are meeting their co-workers for the very first time”:
There are about 100,000 flight attendants in the U.S. alone and they get their flights through a process of bidding, one month at a time, one month ahead. Most really do “see the world,” as the old glamorized image of the intrepid stewardess suggests, instead of working the same route over and over again. As a result, explains Drew Whitelegg in Working the Skies, they rarely run into the same flight attendant twice.
This means that flight attendants must get to know one another quickly once they get on board. They need to do so to make food and beverage service efficient, to coordinate their actions in the tight galleys in which they work and, most importantly, so that they will trust one another if they are called upon to do what they are really there for: acting in an emergency, one that could theoretically happen within seconds of take-off. There’s no time to lose. “[F]rom the moment they board the plane,” writes Whitelegg, “these workers — even if complete strangers — begin constructing bonds.”
Previous Dish on flight attendants here and here. Update from a reader:
Generally true for airline pilots, too. Two of my old college roommates are now captains on major US airlines. They almost never fly with same co-captains; sometimes more than a year passes before they fly with same crew. You can tell by watching them introduce themselves to each other as they’re getting on board.
The Dish 