Every traveller has dreamed of the day they arrive at the airport and get upgraded to first class. However, one flight attendant is now lifting the lid on the crazy lengths people have gone to for a little bit of luxury treatment in the sky.
Cabin crew member, Destanie, who has shared multiple travel tips and tricks to her TikTok page, revealed what the flight staff do when they find a passenger in a seat class they’re not assigned to.
According to the 25-year-old, who hasn’t revealed which airline she works for, they would “never allow that”.
“If someone wants to switch cabins or even get an upgrade, that’s to be dealt with with the gate agent,” the Philadelphia-born crew member explained. “Flight attendants do not deal with any of that.”
She added that the airline she works for considers people sitting in seats they didn’t book to be theft because they didn’t pay for the upgrade.
“Usually first class is always full,” she shared. “So people don’t really have the room to pull some stupid stuff.”
If there are spaces in first class, Destanie says they have a tier system to give out the empty seats.
“If you have a credit card or if you have some status with the airline, they usually end up upgrading people,” she shared.
“There have been multiple times that men have hit on me thinking that I’m going to move them to first class,” Destanie said, giggling. “Because they told me I was pretty.”
“Like, this is the most beautiful cabin crew I’ve ever seen,” the man reportedly exclaimed.
Destanie said she caught on to what he was doing after spotting an empty first-class seat in his line of vision.
“I literally dead a** looked at him and I was like, ‘I’m not going to take that compliment now,’” she said.
However, the cabin crew member revealed that it was not only the first-class seats people try to nab at the last minute.
“What people all the time pull is they try to move to the exit rows,” she confessed. “Exit rows are upgraded seats and for my airline, you get like free cocktails when you sit in the exit row.”
She said people tried to sneak into these seats all the time.
“One time this guy moved and he literally argued with me back and forth,” she recalled, adding that he insisted he could help in an emergency - which she pointed out was not how it worked.
“You can’t move to the seat. It’s an upgraded seat,” she explained.
