Confessions of a 1980s Flight Attendant

CNN
—

“I grew up in the jet age,” says New York Times bestselling author and novelist Ann Hood, whose book “Fly Girl” is a memoir of her adventurous years as a TWA flight attendant at the tail end of the golden age of air travel.

As a child growing up in Virginia, she witnessed the first flight of the Boeing 707 – which ushered in the era of commercial airline travel – and saw the construction of Dulles Airport.

At age 11, after returning to her native Rhode Island with her family, she read a 1964 book called “How to Become a Flight Attendant” and her mind was made up.

“Even though it was extremely sexist, it appealed to me because it was about having a job that lets you see the world and I thought it could work.”

In 1978, after graduating from college, Hood began sending out applications to airlines. “I think 1978 was a really interesting year because a lot of the women I studied with had one foot in conventional wisdom and stereotypes and the other in the future. It was a pretty confusing time for young women.”

“Flight attendant” was a newly coined term, a neutral evolution of the terms “stewardesses” and “hostesses,” and airline deregulation was imminent, ready to shake things up.

But for the most part, flying was still glamorous and sophisticated, and flight attendants were still “beautiful, sexy ornaments,” as Hood puts it, even as they were already fighting for women’s rights and against discrimination.

The stereotype of miniskirted flight attendants flirting with male passengers still persists, popularized by books such as “Coffee, Tea, or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses,” published as a 1967 true-life story but later revealed to have been written by Donald Bain, a public relations executive for American Airlines.

Some of the worst hiring requirements for becoming a flight attendant – such as age restrictions and loss of employment upon marriage or childbirth – had already been lifted, but others remained.

Perhaps most shocking was the fact that women were expected to maintain the weight they were at when they were hired.

“All the airlines would send out a chart with your application, and you’d look at your height and weight limit, and if you didn’t meet that, they wouldn’t even interview you,” Hood says. “But once you were hired, at least at TWA, you couldn’t go over that weight limit. You had to stick to your hiring weight, which in my case was about 15 pounds under my maximum limit.”

“My roommate was kicked out because of this. The worst part of it all, besides the consequences for women, is that this restriction was only removed in the 1990s.”

Hood was one of 560 flight attendants, out of 14,000 applicants, hired in 1978 by TWA, then a major carrier, acquired by American Airlines in 2001.

The job began with a few days of intensive training in Kansas City, where the future flight attendants learned everything from the names of airplane parts to emergency medical procedures to safety protocols for seven different aircraft. The list included the Queen of the Skies, the Boeing 747.

“It was pretty terrifying because it was so big, and there were stairs, spiral stairs that led up to first class that you had to go up and down a lot,” Hood said. “I kept thinking, ‘Don’t trip.’ I got used to it.”

Sculpture by Chateaubriand

She says her favorite plane to work on was the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. “Domestically, only Eastern Airlines and TWA flew it. It was a very accessible and functional wide-body airplane, with a nice configuration of two seats on each side and four seats in the middle, so everyone could get out easily. No one was unhappy with that airplane.”

Back then, flying was still glamorous, she said.

“People dressed up to fly and remembered the food. It’s really different than today. I can only compare it to staying in a nice hotel, or maybe on a cruise ship. There was no plastic, and economy class was super nice,” says Hood, who remembers donning his signature Ralph Lauren uniform and carving up cooked chateaubriand to order from first-class passengers, who also had a choice of Russian caviar and lobster bisque to accompany their Dom Pérignon.

Not everything went as planned. Smoking on board was commonplace and for the stewardesses and stewards it was a real nightmare.

“If you were going away for five days, which was not uncommon, you had to take a whole separate uniform because you smelled so much smoke,” Hood says. “I was really happy when it stopped. The first few rows of each section were designated non-smoking, but the whole plane was filled with smoke because you couldn’t stop it from blowing back, it was ridiculous.”

And the Mile High Club? “It wasn’t uncommon to see a guy go into the restroom and a minute later his seatmate would join him, or something like that,” Hood says. “It didn’t happen on every flight, but you would see it.”

“International flights weren’t typically as crowded as they are today, so in those five-seat middle sections of a 747, you could see a couple flip up the armrests, grab a blanket and disappear under it. I can’t say what they were doing, but it looked suspicious.”

As for passengers flirting with flight attendants or asking them out, that was also common. “I’ve had dates with passengers, but they were usually disastrous. It wasn’t what I had imagined. But in 1982, I met a man on a flight from San Francisco to New York. He was sitting in compartment 47F – and I dated him for five years.”

Hood has seen his share of oddities on board. “The strangest one was probably the woman in first class who appeared to be nursing her cat. I can’t say that was the case, but she was holding her cat close to her.”

“And then there’s the guy who flew the whole way in his tight boxer shorts, shirt and tie because he didn’t want to wrinkle his pants for a job interview. Or the guy on a 747 in Frankfurt who was riding his bike down the aisle,” she reveals.

That said, routine sometimes set in and not all flights were a wonderful concentration of adventure and glamour.

“I would say my job was 80 percent fun and 20 percent boring. On some flights, especially the ones that weren’t very busy, there was a lot of time to devote to it. You could only serve people a certain amount of food and drink and show a certain number of movies. I made my job fun. I liked talking to people. I liked the feeling of it. I still love flying today,” Hood says.

She says that it was indeed possible for her to visit and experience the cities she visited. “Sometimes the stopover was very short or we were just tired, but most of the time the city was just a stone’s throw away. I took advantage of that a lot during my international flights.”

She quit her job to pursue her writing career in 1986. By then, things had already changed. Deregulation, which removed federal control over everything from fares to routes, had taken effect, changing the world of aviation forever.

Planes became increasingly crowded and economy class ceased to be as enjoyable, but flying also became more democratic and accessible to a much wider section of society.

Hood says she is proud of her career in the air.

“Flight attendants are a force. They are very unionized. They are independent. In the cabin, they make all the decisions. They have to solve problems. They are there for emergencies. They land in cities where they know nothing and no one and find their way.

“It’s a very rewarding job, but at the same time sexist. In itself, it’s as contradictory today as it was when I started it,” she says.

Nevertheless, she recommends it as a career option.

“I was 21 when I got hired, and it gave me confidence, poise and the ability to react quickly,” she adds. “To take the controls of that plane and, once I got off, walk into a city and feel completely comfortable – or at least understand how to feel comfortable there.”

“I don’t know if it should be a life’s work. If someone wants it, great. But I think a few years working as a flight attendant can change your life.”