Alaska Airlines flight attendant saves rare flamingo eggs during flight
Feb 7, 2024, 6:14 AM | Updated: 6:17 am
Alaska Airlines flight attendant meets the flamingo she saved. (Photo: Alaska Airlines)
(Photo: Alaska Airlines)
Flight attendants are trained to take care of all kinds of requests when somebody rings the overhead call button.
Usually they have to do with drinks or bags or passenger comfort.
But a flight attendant named Amber, working a trip from Atlanta to Seattle last summer had to get creative, when a flier needed some special assistance she hadn’t heard before.
“A passenger rang the call button and asked if I would help keep some eggs warm,” Amber said.
Turns out those eggs were coming from Zoo Atlanta and headed to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. They were rare Chilean flamingo eggs and the incubator keeping them warm was malfunctioning.
If the eggs cooled down too much, they wouldn’t survive.
So Amber got creative. She filled the rubber gloves in the galley with warm water, and brought them to the passenger.
They wrapped the gloves around the eggs.
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Passengers nearby also donated scarves and coats to help maintain the temperature.
Amber and other cabin crew members would switch out the gloves when the water cooled down, and with all that attention, the eggs arrived, safe and warm in Seattle.
Several months later, Amber was invited by the Woodland Park Zoo to visit the baby chicks she helped save.
“I was honored and so happy that the chicks had hatched—all six of them!” she said.
Amber visited the exhibit with her granddaughter, Sunny, who has now become a namesake for one of the chicks.
According to the zoo, the fledgling flamingos mark the first hatching of the species at Woodland Park, since 2016.
Their addition brings the current flamingo flock to 49.
The names of all the chicks are: Magdalena, Amaya, Rosales, Gonzo, Bernardo—and Sunny
