Throwback to my flying days with a prominent airline. If you’ve ever worked in aviation, you know how the system works: thousands of crew, total rotation every single pattern. One week you’re flying with your batchmate, next week you’re with a crew you will literally never see again for another full year. Every flight is a total lottery—sometimes you get a dream crew, sometimes you get pure toxicity, and sometimes… well, you get creepy.
This happened during my first year as a junior steward.
We had just landed after a long-haul flight and were on the crew bus heading to our layover hotel. I was super exhausted, just wanting to crash. Out of nowhere, the Flight Manager—a senior guy, quite small-sized, very soft-spoken—slid into the seat next to me.
We were making small talk about the flight, and then out of absolute nowhere, he looked straight at me and deadpan asked: “Do you know a man knows how to make a man feel real good?”
Bro. My brain immediately short-circuited. I was young, fresh, and honestly terrified of causing a scene or burning bridges with a senior manager who grades my performance reports. I just gave that awkward Singaporean “Haha, alamak don’t like that say la” laugh and quickly looked out the bus window, pretending I didn’t catch it properly.
When we reached the hotel, everyone was getting their keycards at the lobby. He walked up to me again and whispered, “Hey, my room is higher floor, much better setup. You want to come up to my room to take a look?”
At that point, alarm bells were ringing loudly in my head. I knew exactly what was up. I immediately pulled out the classic deflection: “No thanks, boss, I’m super tired, going to sleep already.”
For the entire 3-day layover, this guy tried multiple times to get me alone—asking me to go for “coffee” in his room, asking me to walk with him while the rest of the crew were out shopping. I spent the entire trip avoiding him like the absolute plague, hiding behind the rest of the crew and never walking anywhere alone.
Thankfully nothing physical happened, but the subtle power dynamics in the industry are real. To all the fresh junior crew out there: trust your gut. If something feels off, just dodge!
Anybody else got weird layover stories with senior crew? Drop them below.