Jan. 17—Alexis Bushnell, a United Airlines flight attendant based in Houston, didn't really know what she was getting into when she applied for the job.
"In my head, flight attendants are these glamorous people who get to travel around the world and do all these amazing things," Bushnell said. "And that quickly changed when I realized all of our jobs as a flight attendant."
The training was intense, she continued, but rightly so. There have been glamorous parts of the job; she was able to use her travel benefits, for example, to take her parents to Peru. But there's a lot more to being a flight attendant than pouring drinks on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, said Bushnell, who is also from Houston.
"We are truly safety professionals," she said. "What we do on the plane can determine the fate of someone's life, whether that be a medical emergency or if, God forbid, something happens on the plane. That is our responsibility, and it's a responsibility we take very seriously."
United's presence in the Houston area is expanding, with the opening of a new training center for future flight attendants. Going forward, all new hires will spend six and a half weeks at the Inflight Training Center at Bush Intercontinental Airport, which officially opened Tuesday.
The new center, which cost some $24 million, adds 56,000 square feet of classroom and training spaces to United's existing training center in Houston, one of seven for the Chicago-headquartered airline.
"Back in 2019, when we originally pitched, it was really to improve our new-hire training experience and our flight attendants that come through here for continuing qualification," said Mo Quinn Mariano, United's director of inflight training. "Now, with that being said, having this new facility we have the ability to train much larger volumes. We can have 160 new hires a week."
To handle the volume—and because airline crews don't generally work Monday through Friday, nine-to-five—the center is open 23 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. On Christmas Day, the trainees were joined by a Santa Claus.
The center includes several life-size cabins, specially equipped with full-length windows, so that trainees can practice for real-world situations, such as turbulence or smoke in the cabin, as well as familiarizing themselves with the doors, jump seats and configurations of the various aircraft in United's fleet.
"You never want your training to just be, we're hitting the mark," said Ben Rose, United's manager for inflight training programs. "We always want to exceed that."
A centerpiece of the new facility is an aquatic center, where trainees can practice evacuating a cabin full of passengers onto inflatable slides and rafts.
The slide—which you can probably visualize from movies, or news footage of 2009's "miracle on the Hudson," when US Airways Flight 1549 safely landed in that river—detaches from the cabin after being loaded with passengers, instructors explained. Additional passengers, wearing flotation devices, then escape onto the raft, which also comes with a canopy to protect sudden sailors from the elements.
Previously, instructors said, trainees practiced for such situations in a dry room, which let them experience the equipment, but not the added challenge of handling the equipment while it's bobbing in the water. (Harder than it looks, reportedly.)
"Of course, it's highly unlikely we will have a water landing, but we're testing so much more than that," said Ricky Ramos-Rodriguez, senior manager of the center, as a several dozen trainees, in black swimsuits, prepared for the next exercise. "We're testing critical thinking, and how you act in an emergency when you're under stress."
The center opens as United, headquartered in Chicago, expands its footprint in the Houston as part of an overall growth strategy that is expected to bring as many as 1,800 jobs additional jobs to the area. Last month, for example, the airline and Boeing announced an order for 100 of Boeing's 787 wide-body aircraft, with the option to order 100 more.
" Houston obviously is a very important hub for United," said Quinn Mariano. "This [center] is only a fraction of what United is doing when it comes to Houston."
For the trainees, the new center will help them be prepared for whatever their workday might bring.
"Our job is so multifaceted," said Josh Tanner, a trainee who's worked for other airlines previously and expects to be based in Chicago after completing United's course. "One day I'm a chef; one day I'm a firefighter; some days I'm trying to calm people."
"You never know where someone's coming from. You never know what they're going through," he continued. "And being able to be that positive light— you can literally just smile, and change someone's day."
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