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Monday, March 8, 2010

No Fist Fights, Please

Five young Virgin America flight attendants star in Fly Girls, a new 'reality' show that debuts on the CW Network on March 24.

Porter Gale, Virgin America's vice president of marketing, said in a press release. "We're thrilled to work with The CW to show how our in-flight teammates are re-writing the script and bringing the style and fun back to flying."

Kristen Vadas, The CW's senior vice president, alternative programming, stated: "This show is about real women who happen to have landed on a very different career path. It chronicles the places they go, the guests they meet and their lives together."

The focus of the show is on young women who are cabin attendants. The show is taking a tack from other reality shows by having the stars conveniently share accommodations in Los Angeles.

"Fly Girls is The CW Network's new reality docu-series that takes a 360-degree look at the lives of the charismatic jet-setting flight attendants on America's hippest new airline: Virgin America," says a press release.

"This show is about real, down-to-earth young women who happen to have landed in an exceptionally glamorous, high-flying career filled with exotic locations and handsome strangers," added Vadas. "We're thrilled to be working with Virgin America for this unique peek into a whirlwind lifestyle that shows how tough it is to be grounded when you work 35,000 feet in the air."

Over the course of the eight half-hour episodes, "five beautiful Virgin America flight attendants jet from one glamorous location to the next, including Las Vegas, South Beach and New York City, while pursuing good times, great parties, adventure and love.

"From their shared home-base 'crash pad' in Los Angeles, CA, the young women will deal with work lives that include split-second decision-making, demanding and sometimes fascinating passengers, long hours in the air and layovers in interesting locales. Their personal lives are filled with romance, family, friendships and more than a few roommate conflicts," the CW Network noted.

Fortunately, the Fly Girls scripts were not "ripped from the headlines' as the long-running Law and Order television drama plotlines are said to come from. If that were the case, an episode of Fly Girls would include an airborne slugfest

Last month, two female flight attendants working a Delta Connection flight out of Rochester, NY got into a fight on board their regional aircraft.

As a result, the flight deck crew cancelled the flight to Atlanta forcing dozens of passengers to make alternative travel plans. "Apparently, they got into a fist fight on the plane and the pilot decided to kick everybody off the plane," said one air traveler. "They told us we had to get off the plane because the stewardesses were fighting."

The flight was operated by Pinnacle Airlines. A spokesman for Pinnacle says the flight attendants will be kept off-duty, pending an investigation. "The acts described are not acceptable," said Joe Williams, a spokesman for Memphis-based Pinnacle. The spokesman described the fight as a "little" argument that started as the plane was returning to the gate after a passenger complained of panic attacks.

Specific details of the altercation were not available. The director of Rochester's airport, David Damelio, said law enforcement was not involved.