Should Flight Attendants Be Using The Overhead Bins In First Class?

A First Class passenger had a genuine problem on a plane. No, the crew didn’t run out of his preferred meal choice, but they ran out of space for his cabin luggage in the stowage bins above his seat. The bins were in fact full of cabin crew bags!

What should the passenger do? More importantly, what should the cabin crew do?

Below is the actual complaint which was posted on the Flyertalk forum. Read slowly and try not to be too quick to judge.  

Should Flight Attendants Be Using The Overhead Bins

“My first post on this forum. I have 30+ years flying the big 3 and literally millions of miles on all (AA,DL,UA) and I’m top tier on all. I have flown AS twice now in the past 3 months, both to Hawaii. Fares were good. And everything else is good, too.

My complaint is that, twice now, my wife and I (veteran flyers of the 1st row in First Class) were unable to get to ahead of the boarding rush, due to unforeseen circumstances. We boarded 20 minutes after first call.

The bins above our seats were stowed with FA’s stuff on all 4 legs of our two trips. Didn’t bug me terribly until on one of the flights the FA said we’d have to check our stuff. My wife was very nonplussed and protested significantly (very unlike her). Eventually, one of the FA’s relented and we found space.

I don’t expect much sympathy (rarely seen on FT for something like this) but is this an aberrancy? Can’t the FA’s put their stuff somewhere else other than above row 1, where PAX have no option to stow something in front of them?

Thanx

 

I know how this could be frustrating for a passenger, especially one who paid big for First Class comfort.

The thing is, flight attendants don’t have dedicated space on the plane for their cabin bags. Flying on small planes makes it even harder. The only available space is the overhead bins.

Just like passengers, flight attendants prefer to have their bags near where they sit or work so they could keep an eye on them. The truth is, there are many incidences of theft where cabin crew had their wallets, purses and passports stolen.

Adding to that, it isn’t uncommon that passengers take our bags by mistake during disembarkation thinking it’s theirs.

We can’t put our bags in coat closets either since they get filled with jackets.

Maybe aircraft manufacturers should have thought that flight attendants have bags too!