“Old Mcdonald had a farm!”

The land of the queen has changed a lot in the past few decades. Despite the recent royal weddings, and daily rituals of changing the guards outside  Buckingham palace, now when I fly often to London what pops up in mind is the old ITV comedy Mind Your Language.

It is a land of expatriates now. Turned into British passport holders over the years, they are one of a kind demanding passengers we get on-board, as they still do demand recognition & respect for the queens passport. When it comes to their children, they demand for extra special treatment, even above their old fellow countrymen. Many times they show their passport to me, asking me to deprive another child a bassinet and fix one for them instead, and demanding to serve their child only cows’ milk.

This flight remarkably carries so many infants, sometimes even up to 50. Thus passengers come with excess baggage, seating requests for baby bassinets, and cows’ milk which is impossible to accommodate, sometimes due to the number of infants on board despite which passport they hold.

As airport security would let sufficient milk formula, or 100ml bottles of milk to be transported by mothers with infants, they conveniently decide that cow’s milk on the aircraft would be a much fresher choice for the children, and would reduce a considerable amount of weight out of the heavy luggage’s full of diapers, diapers and more diapers.

On this flight there are couple of services, and catering supplies of cow’s milk is normally sufficient for the tea & coffee service only. However the mothers, who are at the top of their stress levels, keeping their children calm, alternatively start treating the airhostess’s as their emotional punch bags. This mother with 3 children was highly irritated once we ran out of cow’s milk. No matter how much we explained that we have absolutely no fresh milk left she didn’t give up. The only option left was infant milk formula, as we are above 30,000ft; there is absolutely no other option, no supermarket stops.

She started being hysterical and demanding nothing but the cow’s milk. “My children need cow’s milk now! I am a British Passport holder! And this is unacceptable!”, as we couldn’t handle the situation anymore, our manager was called to try and resolve the problem.

He listened, Empathised, Asked open ended questions, Paraphrased, however with no luck he said out loud “Okay fine. Crew go to the cargo and milk the bloody cow! Some people just think there is a farm down there!” And she finally got it.
 

Love, Dany