“Nok stood out with her personality, charm and beauty – I do a lot of air miles, and I have never encountered anyone at 36,000 feet with Nok’s personality,” says Katalan of first impressions.īefore disembarking, he offered to take her out while she was in New York. Katalan didn’t let the opening slip away. I wasn’t flirting, just being friendly and doing my job.”Īs the flight neared its destination, the passenger told Suntaranon she should be Thailand’s “Next Top Model,” then turned to Katalan and quipped, “If you don’t ask her out, I will,” she recalls with a laugh. “I spent some time talking with Ziv and the passenger in front of him – a really funny guy. Two flight attendants fell in love on an airplane. On the day she met Katalan, Suntaranon was initially scheduled to work on a route from Bangkok to Rome, but Thai Airways reassigned her to New York at the last minute.

Those 18 hours in the air would lead to a globe-trotting romance with glamorous rendezvous around the world and nearly two decades full of adventures together.Īs one of Philadelphia’s top chefs, Suntaranon has earned abundant praise for her bright, spicy Southern Thailand food at Kalaya Thai Kitchen.īut before she found her calling in the culinary world, she worked as a business and first class cabin flight attendant for two decades. He was standing up, putting his TUMI backpack in the overhead bin.”Īnd as that flight to New York took off, so too did their story. “It was a simple black T-shirt and a cool Bulgari watch. “I remember how he looked, what he did, what he was wearing,” Suntaranon tells CNN Travel. When Katalan, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, stepped onboard, she noticed him right away. A Business Class flight attendant, Suntaranon was roaming the cabin and greeting guests as they settled into their seats. It was September 2006 on a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to New York City. Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon still remembers the moment she first saw Ziv Katalan in vivid detail.

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