Flight attendant reveals the code language that cabin crew use to communicate among themselves

Communication is a major part of coordination at the work place and also a crucial tool to provide customers with the best experience in any industry. Like finance jargon and terms used in tech, the aviation industry also has its own vocabulary, which only the cabin crew uses to communicate with each other. While you may be familiar with certain terms like “galley" there are still terms that you may want to understand to keep up with the flight attendants. Recently, Bobby Laurie, a former flight attendant and the current co-host of the travel show The Jet Set, sat down with Reader's Digest to talk about the words that flight attendants around the world use in the air and on the ground.

Flight attendants are heard using terms like Red-eye, which means an overnight flight that arrives in the morning Pink-eye, which is a flight that takes off before red-eye. Another commonly used word is holding pen which refers to the area surrounding the gate where passengers wait to board.

Similarly, an 'originator' is the first flight of the day from an airport. "Airlines are very interested in making sure the originators depart on time because a delay on that flight would cause every flight that airplane operates for the day to be behind schedule," while Turn is a "flight pairing that the flight attendants work where they depart from a city, fly to another, then go right back to the city they departed from," Laurie explains. "In context, a Los Angeles–based flight attendant can do a D.C. turn, a San Francisco turn [or] a Seattle turn."

Another term runner, is often used for a passenger who is late to the airport or late from a connecting flight and is quite literally running to catch their departing flight, while a spinner is a passenger who arrives without a seat assignment and stands in the middle of the aisle.

Cross-check is another common term that is pretty self-explanatory. It simply means double-checking to see if everything is alright. All call, on the other hand, is the call the attendants get. “Generally, after a cross-check, there’s an all call, where all of the flight attendants get on the internal phone system and verify with each other that the aircraft doors have been correctly armed or disarmed," Laurie says.

Now there are other terms that are more commonly used during the flight, like Privo, which " references the provisioning on the aircraft: for the flight drinks, snacks, meals, etc.," says Laurie.

U.M is another important term that flight attendants use to refer to an unaccompanied minor traveling alone who is in the flight crew's care. Flight attendants are also generally heard referring to the bathroom as the blue room, which is term used in reference to the blue liquid used in aircraft toilets.

There's also the term RON, which stands for remain overnight. “They’re asking whether or not the plane is done for the day and spending the night. In other words, it’s not going back out that evening. Sometimes it’s also called a terminator," Laurie says.

Other terms like crash pad and commuter refer to the apartment where flight attendants stay after a flight and the flight that the attendants take to travel to their hometown.