Some people have strong bonds and want to always be together. American flight attendants Cynthia and Hannah Heck are such people.
Cynthia, 72, has been a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines since 2000. She inspired Hannah, 24, to take up the same vocation and finish the course last year.
The grandmother arranged to be on her granddaughter’s first Southwest flight. When Hannah proudly introduced Cynthia as her grandmother to passengers after a routine safety demonstration, some were surprised, the two recalled in an interview with CNN.
Other passengers were in disbelief, as it was rare to meet two generations of flight attendants together on the same flight.
If the Hecks seemed inseparable, Japan Air Lines had to break up two groups of passengers booked to fly from Tokyo and Osaka airports to Amami Ōshima Island in southern Japan.
Fuel for the planes won’t be enough to fly the prominent athletes competing in the Special National Sports Festival, so JAL decided to add one plane where 27 of them can separately fly to Oshima from Haneda Airport in Tokyo.
It was not advisable to put all of them in one bigger plane, as the airport in Oshima can only serve smaller commercial aircraft like Boeing 737-800s with a capacity of 165 passengers.
Also, such planes have weight restrictions and cannot add extra fuel needed to carry the sumo wrestlers, each weighing an average of 120 kilograms, JAL explained.
The JAL passengers were among 460 sumo wrestlers who attended the SNSF in Oshima.