Life in the Time of Coronavirus
The Flight Attendant Who Fears Being Grounded
A new series about how this pandemic affects our lives, our loved ones, our work, and our way of life
Life in the Time of Coronavirus is a new GEN series where we are interviewing people across the country who have had their lives upended or who are experiencing the stress of the unknown.
David Nicholas Rigel is a 27-year-old flight attendant from London, Kentucky who is in the second year of his career at American Airlines. Air travel is down as many planes fly at half capacity or nearly empty, and flight attendants like David are staring down a potentially devastating loss of work.
I am a flight attendant for American Airlines. We have nine airlines in the United States, and American Airlines is one of the big three along with Delta and United. We’re a legacy airline. It’s a little surreal to wrap my brain around the past week. Even just two weeks ago, the members of my crew were talking about which routes would be affected. But we were mostly chalking it up to media hysterics and people overreacting. If we can learn to wash our hands, practice basic hygiene, and not be disgusting, we thought it’d be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.
