A TikTok-famous flight attendant reveals the real reason flight staff greet you when you walk on a plane

Advertisement
A TikTok-famous flight attendant reveals the real reason flight staff greet you when you walk on a plane
Kat Kamalani reveals the secret lives of flight attendants in her viral TikTok videos.TikTok/@katkamalani
  • People are loving Kat Kamalani's TikTok, where she shares what it's like to be a flight attendant.
  • In a recent video, Kamalani revealed that flight attendants size you up while you board the plane.
  • She said they're looking to see if you can help in an emergency and for major red flags.
Advertisement

Flight attendant Kat Kamalani is racking up millions of views on a video that reveals how flight attendants size you up while you board the plane.

In the recent TikTok video, Kamalani (known on TikTok as @katkamalani) said flight staff greet you when you walk on a plane to see if you can help in an emergency and for major red flags. The video had about 2.5 million views and more than 500,000 likes at the time of publication.

@katkamalani

You would never guess the last part... ##secretsrevealed ##traveler ##momsontiktok ##flightcrew ##travelhacks

♬ SUNNY DAY - Matteo Rossanese

Kamalani did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on this story.

Flight attendants are looking for able-bodied people and warning signs

"So when you walk on the airplane and see our happy, smiling face, we're actually looking you up and down, and we are trying to find our ABPs," the Salt-Lake-City-based flight attendant said in the video.

ABP stands for "able body person," or someone people who can help flight attendants in an emergency, Kamalani said.

Advertisement

People who qualify as ABPs include military personnel, pilots, firefighters, cops, and doctors, who can assist with medical emergencies or help in situations when the pilot needs to land the plane or if there is a security breach, she said.

Flight attendants also scan for ABPs while walking up and down the aisles, she said.

One TikTok follower who said they were a doctor asked how Kamalani would know his profession just by looking at him.

"Oh, we know," Kamalani responded in the comments, adding a wink emoji. Responding to another follower who asked the same question, she wrote that some passengers tell staff "'hey, I'm a doctor in seat 34A just in case," which is appreciated.

Flight attendants are also looking for signs of human trafficking, Kamalani says at the end of her video.

Advertisement

"It happens a lot in the industry," she said. "And our passenger safety is our number one priority, so we're just looking for things that look off."

An example of a sign that something is a bit off would be "if somebody's holding a box that's leaking or producing a certain smell," Kamalani previously told Insider.

Flight attendants are trained to look for human trafficking, Insider's Mark Matousek previously reported, and will report their concerns to the flight's captain.

The captain can then call operations employees on the ground the figure out more about the passenger, like whether or not they have a one-way ticket.

About 460,000 victims of human trafficking were identified in the US between 2012 and 2018, according to the State Department.

Advertisement

If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking, you can call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.

{{}}