A pilot opened up about an experience where an airport employee mistook her for a flight attendant.
In a video shared to her TikTok last week, Sabrina, @sabrinaleej, could be seen wearing her uniform and sitting in the cockpit of a plane. She proceeded to face the camera, with a confused look on her face, as she explained the mistake that the airport worker made.
“Gate agent looked me in the eye today, asked if I was the flight attendant,” Sabrina wrote in the text over the video. “(Common occurrence).”
She further explained her thoughts about the incident in the caption of the post, writing: “It’s jarring to me because they work at an airport. You know what the pilot uniforms are.”
Speaking to The Independent, Sabrina opened up about previous instances where she’s been mistaken for a flight attendant.
“It happens more often than I would like to see in real life between gate agents mostly,” she said. “Those especially that have tried to issue me a flight attendant jumpseat, and I would have to correct them, saying that I need the jump seat in the cockpit. Or I’d response by simply stating, ‘Yeah, I’m a pilot.’ And a lot of people are very nice and they take the comment very well but every now and then it gets a little mean.”
As of 2 November, the video has more than 1.5m views, with TikTok users in the comments poking fun at how Sabrina should have responded to the gate agent’s remark.
“Ask them if they are new and tell them you will explain how to differentiate the uniforms so they don’t embarrass themselves again,” one wrote.
“That’s when you say: ‘Yeah I am but I thought I’d try flying the plane today too,’” another viewer wrote.
A third person added: “You should reply by saying ‘aww it’s your first day.’”
Other TikTok users sympathised with Sabrina and expressed how they could relate to her experience.
“When people walk into MY law firm they ask me if I’m the receptionist,” one wrote.
“As a flight attendant, I’m offended for you,” another said. “Unacceptable. They KNOW our uniforms.”
“I’m the boss of a million dollar company, and one of my clients (!) said, ‘I shouldn’t be so arrogant because I was just an assistant,’” a third wrote.
In a follow-up video, Sabrina said that while she loves flight attendants, she’s not the only pilot who’s been mistaken for one. She also clarified that simply being labelled as a flight attendant wasn’t the issue that she wanted to address.
“Being called a flight attendant is not an insult,” she wrote in the text over her video. “It’s an insult when it’s used to try to put me down after all my hard work. When you do that, you are insulting both me and flight attendants.”
Speaking to The Independent, Sabrina also opened up about the respect that she has with her fellow pilots, whether they are males or females, despite any occasional instances where they disagreed with each other.
“Pilots themselves understand what I have done to be upfront in that seat so they almost always respect me. I’ve gotten a few pilots here and there in the airline industry that has been quite rude to me or told me to calm down,” she said. “But for the most part the airlines are pretty good with that. I experienced most of my misogyny through men in general aviation outside of airlines.”
