The exciting surprise of the flight attendant on the El Al flight

Adi Talmor, 22 years old from Kiryat Ata originally, moved to live in Tel Aviv recently after starting her new position as an air stewardess at El Al about a month ago.

After finishing her military service, Adi went on the big trip to South America, and during the trip she already marked her next destination. “I had a friend with me who told me about her job as a flight attendant, and it captivated me from the first moment,” says Adi in a conversation with mako. “I am very much a people person and a friend, and that friend told me how much she enjoys her job, meeting new people, traveling around the world, and over time on the trip I became more and more intrigued and asked her questions about the position and told myself that I would go for it with all my might.”

When she returned to Israel, Adi submitted a contract to the El Al company, began the selection process and eventually she was accepted for the position. “There are very organized selection stages, and I came to it with a high motivation because I felt that this was the most right and suitable position for me, and that I could enjoy the environment and everything it offers. Last November I started the course and finished it successfully, and in January I officially entered the position.”

At the beginning of January, when she joined the company as a flight attendant, Adi’s father, Yuval, told her that he had a flight to Milan expected in February, and asked if she could be on the flight for the position. “My father flies a lot as part of his job, and because I just started my new position, I didn’t know if it would be possible and I could get the flight to Milan. I told him it might be problematic and probably wouldn’t be possible.”

Towards the end of the month, Adi received the flight schedule for the month of February, and saw that on the date of her father’s flight, she was assigned to another flight. “My father is a very organized person, he sent me all the flight details in advance so that I didn’t have to make an effort. I went into the work arrangement of his flight, I saw who the flight attendants were to see if I could switch with one of them, and it really was. I talked to one of the flight attendants who got excited after I told her that my father would be on this flight, and told me that she would gladly switch with me and take my flight, so that I could work on the line to Milan.”

After being placed on her father’s flight, Adi contacted her mother. “I debated whether to tell my father this because he really wanted me to be on the flight with him and was excited about this possibility. My mother told me not to tell and to keep it a secret so that I could surprise him, so I wrote to him that I could not change and that I would be on another flight that day.” On the day of the flight to Milan, Adi’s father contacted her and asked if she was in the field. “My father is one of those people who is terrible at things and likes to check everything, including flight times, so I was able to make an excuse to him that I was just working and wouldn’t be able to meet him, and at that time I was actually on my way to the plane.”

“I spoke to the service manager on our flight and told her that I was surprising my father and would very much like to be in the boarding position, she immediately agreed and I asked one of the flight attendants to record this moment,” recalls Adi. “As soon as I saw my father get on the plane, I looked at him and said ‘Hello, welcome’, then he looked at me and nodded with a ‘thank you’ look, and I noticed that he didn’t realize it was me, or that he already knew about the surprise in advance. So I touched his hand, I asked ‘Did you know?’ Then I realized that he suddenly turned his attention to me and shouted ‘You!’, here I already realized that I had succeeded in my task of surprising him and he was in complete shock.”

In the documentation of the exciting moment that Adi uploaded to the web, Yuval is seen grabbing his head after he realized that his daughter was on the flight with him. “He hugged me and was really excited. The person who took the video thought that my father didn’t recognize me when he got on the plane, but then they realized that it took him a while to absorb the surprise and that I managed to surprise him. I showed the video afterwards to the employees I was with and they laughed at his reaction, it was exciting and funny at the same time. The video exploded online and reached hundreds of thousands of views, I didn’t expect it.”