Come fly with me...

With training out of the way I was eager to get started in my new profession. One slight hiccup though. With all the influx of new employees Emirates weren't able to keep up with all the necessary documentation that went with being able to fly eg licencing. So I had a week of doing nothing while waiting for my licence to be processed.

Finally with licence processed it was time to do my first 2 supernumerary flights (supy) or training flights. These 2 flights are designed to get you introduced to the whole process and basically view your fellow crew members in action. The highlight to these flights is you get to sit in the cockpit for takeoff and landing. YEAH!!

My first flight was to Bombay, India and the next to Alexandria, Egypt. Both were turnarounds which is all you get for supy flights. Turnaround means flying there and straight back again. You don't even get off the plane. No real dramas as they aren't the greatest of destinations anyway.

After my supy flights I received the end of the months roster. Due to the fact that rosters are published at the end of the previous month and I had graduated in the middle of the month I wasn't allocated set flights so was put on CU's which is trolley dolley jargon for wait for it..."Can Use" meaning I was on standby of a sorts. FUN!!...NOT!!

My first operational flight I was designated airport standby. This means being packed and ready to be sent absolutely anywhere. A little concerning when this was my first flight as a real flight attendant. I ended up getting called for another turnaround...Dacca. The flight had already boarded and they were waiting for me. So you can imagine nervous enough and having to walk on board through all the seats of passengers looking at me as they knew the flight couldn't leave without me. Oh well. It turned out to be an okay flight. I think in these early days any flight is still exciting.

After that was another series of standby duties which ended up being another series of turnaround flights. By the end of the month I was pretty much over turnarounds and prayed my roster for June was going to at least have a layover somewhere fun. I was rewarded and with only 1 turnaround my life as a flight attendant was looking up. June's roster included Manila, Milan, Vienna, Milan again, Bangkok and Milan again. The beautiful thing about having such great flights is there are so many people who will want to swap other fantastic destinations for yours. Ahh the joys of eswap. This is a system Emirates has in place so you can swap your flights with other cabin crew members. With this little tool I was able to swap my Bangkok for a Paris and my third Milan flight for a London Heathrow....very excited!!!