A Humiliating Landing Day Disaster

September 1 st 2026

Well, welcome to September, everyone. And isn’t that a lovely place to be?

We’ve had sunshine and holidays, barbecues and beach days, and now I always feel as though September is the gentle wind-down we all need. The evenings are still long, the weather is still mild, but the pressure to get outside and make the most of every hour eases off, just ever so slightly.

And the loads start to do the same.

Let’s face it, for all the flight attendants listening, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Give it another week, maybe two, and all those precious school-aged passengers and overseas students will be safely back where they need to be, and suddenly the aircraft will have that brief, glorious drop in passenger numbers. That blissful period when your flights aren’t rammed to the rafters and you might even have time to finish a crossword on your jumpseat or, if you’re really lucky, enjoy a cup of tea while it’s still hot.

But we’re not quite there yet.

So hang in there a little longer, my fellow flight attendants. The end of the summer chaos is in sight.

Until then, I thought I’d tell you a story that I think every crew member will relate to in one way or another, because this month’s blog is all about landing day.

You know the one. You’ve just stepped off a long-haul flight, probably overnight. You’re sleep deprived, running on caffeine and Red Bull, and the world feels as though it’s operating in a parallel universe to your own. It’s the day when, if they’re wise, our partners tread very carefully. My own family put a little extra effort into tidying the house before I get home, and even the dogs seem to understand that my tolerance for chaos is hanging by a thread.

Of course, on landing day I think it’s perfectly reasonable to burst into tears over a few crumbs on the kitchen worktop, because in that moment all I can think about is the fact that I now have to clean the entire house before I can possibly relax and get some sleep.

And heaven forbid my husband makes a misplaced joke.

Because if there’s even the tiniest chance it could be taken the wrong way, I promise you, landing day is the day it will be.

Bless him, though, after more than twenty years together he’s mostly learned the rules... although there is still the occasional lapse in judgement.

So now that you’ve got the picture, let me tell you about one particular landing day last month. One that still makes me shudder every time I think about it. Because as much as I’d love to erase it from my memory altogether, the horror of what happened is still etched firmly into my brain.

So, picture this...

I’ve just landed from Seattle. It’s a long flight, but we managed a decent crew rest, so I felt alert enough to drive home. The roads were quiet, the sun was shining, and my husband had already texted to say the house was spotless.

Better still, there were fresh sheets on the bed waiting for me.

Honestly, it felt like the perfect landing day… and at that moment, my love for my family is endless, and so as I turn onto my local high street I have a thought.

I know... I’ll pick them up a little treat from the bakery.

I’ll arrive home with fresh cream cakes and a smile on my face. The perfect start to landing day for us all.

So, I slow down and start looking for somewhere to park.

It’s only a small high street, with just a handful of shops, but in a town like mine you tend to see the same familiar faces sitting outside the cafés, happily watching the world go by.

Now, this is the exact moment everything started to unravel.

I could have sworn I saw a car indicating to pull out. It was parked in a lay-by right at the end nearest me - an easy, cheeky little space that I could drive straight into without having to reverse park... which, I should probably admit, has never been one of my strengths.

Perfect.

I indicated and pulled in behind it, waiting for the driver to move off.

Except...

...he didn’t.

Because there wasn’t a driver.

The indicator I’d seen was actually the hazard lights, flashing away on an empty car.

Now I was stuck at an awkward angle, half in the lay-by and half sticking out into the road while traffic squeezed past behind me.

Not a problem, I hear you thinking.

Just reverse out.

Well... that’s exactly what I thought too.

So I selected reverse, checked my camera, looked over my shoulder and waited for someone to let me out.

A lady stopped.

That was my cue.

I lifted my foot off the brake, turned the wheel and started reversing.

And then I heard shouting.

The lady who’d stopped started blasting her horn.

And the moment I heard a loud bang against the back of my car...

...I knew I’d done something very, very wrong.

My stomach dropped.

My legs turned to jelly.

Trying not to imagine the worst, I jumped out and ran around to the back of the car.

And there, wedged between my bumper and a litter bin, sat a very angry elderly gentleman on his mobility scooter.

Yes, I had reversed into him and unceremoniously shunted him into a public litter bin.

Meanwhile, every single person on the high street was staring at me. People were running over to help, and I could almost hear what they were thinking.

Who on earth reverses into a man on a mobility scooter?

I tried to apologise.

“I’m so sorry... I was looking over my other shoulder,” I stammered.

To which he replied angrily,

“Well, you obviously weren’t looking at me!”

Then he pointed at my car.

“And you’re on the bloody pavement.”

He was absolutely right.

In my attempt to reverse back, I’d mounted the dropped kerb and ended up partly on the pavement. The one place mobility scooters and elderly gentlemen should be completely safe from reversing cars.

I was horrified.

Mortified.

Utterly ashamed.

Once I’d moved my car forward and freed him, there was huge relief to discover that both he and his scooter appeared to be completely unharmed.

Even so, I could still feel every pair of eyes on me.

Someone muttered, “You shouldn’t have parked there.”

I tried to explain that I’d intended to pull forward into the space, but nobody was really interested in my explanation.

The fact remained...

I’d just reversed into a man on a mobility scooter and pushed him into a litter bin.

That rather overshadowed everything else.

Needless to say, I arrived home without the fresh cream cakes... or the smile I’d intended to bring with them.

I couldn’t even sleep because I was convinced the police would appear on my doorstep at any moment. It wasn’t until the following day that I managed to put the whole thing into some sort of perspective.

Then, inevitably, the jokes began.

Friends started creating AI images of the incident. Others reassured me that I wasn’t going to get arrested and promised that one day I’d look back and laugh.

I’m not quite there yet.

I still haven’t driven down that high street, just in case somebody recognises me.

And I still replay the whole thing in my head, wondering what it must have looked like from

everyone else’s point of view.

I’m sure one day I’ll see the funny side, just like everyone else...

...once the overwhelming embarrassment wears off.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed my little landing day story. If you’ve got one of your own, we’d love to hear it. Share it with us, because hearing your stories might just make me feel a tiny bit better about mine.

And so, this month, I’ll leave you with one final thought...

Be kind to us on landing day.

We may look awake. We may even appear to be functioning like perfectly normal human beings. But the truth is, a small part of our brain has been fried, and until we’ve had a decent sleep and rebooted ourselves, we really can’t be held entirely responsible for our actions.

So if you have a flight attendant in your life and they are being a little unreasonable, if they burst into tears over a few crumbs on the kitchen worktop, or if they accidentally reverses a man on a mobility scooter into a litter bin, just remember...

It’s landing day.

Tomorrow will almost certainly be better.

Much love,

Susan xxx