Confessions of an 80’s Flight Attendant

“I came of age when the jet age came of age,” says Ann Hood, American novelist and New York Times bestselling author, whose latest book “Fly Girl” recounts memoirs of her adventurous years as a flight attendant for the United States. TWA, right at the 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 passenger jet travel – and watched the construction of Dulles Airport.

At age 11, after returning to her native Rhode Island with her family, she read a 1964 book entitled “How to Become an Air Hostess,” and her decision was made.

“Although it was sexist as hell, it appealed to me because it talked about having a job that lets you see the world and I thought, well, this might work for me.”

When he graduated from college in 1978, Hood began applying for airline jobs. “I think 1978 was a really interesting year because a lot of the women I went to college with had one foot in the old ideas and stereotypes and the other in the future. It was a bit of a confusing time for young women.”

“Flight attendant” was a recent term, a gender-neutral catch-up to “receptionists” and “stewardesses,” and airline industry deregulation was coming, ready to shake things up.

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

The stereotype of female flight attendants wearing miniskirts and flirting with male passengers still persisted, popularized by books such as “Coffee, tea or me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Stewardesses” – published as factual in 1967, but later revealed to have been written by Donald Bain, a public relations executive for American Airlines.

weight limits

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

Most shocking, perhaps, was the fact that women had to maintain the weight they were at the time of hiring.

“All the airlines would send you a chart with your application, they’d look at your height and maximum weight, and if you didn’t fall within that, they wouldn’t even interview you,” says Hood.

“But once signed, at least at TWA, you couldn’t go past that maximum weight. You had to stay with your weight when you were hired, which in my case was about 7 kilos less than my maximum limit”.

“My roommate got fired because of this. The really terrible thing about it, other than what it did to women, is that restriction wasn’t removed until the 1990s.”

Hood was one of 560 flight attendants, among 14,000 applicants, hired in 1978 by TWA, then a large company, acquired by American Airlines in 2001.

The job began with a few days of intense training in Kansas City, where flight attendants would learn everything from aircraft part names to emergency medical procedures, as well as the safety protocols of seven different aircraft. The list included the Queen of Heaven Boeing 747.

“It was kind of scary because it was so big – and the spiral stairs leading up to first class that you had to go up and down frequently,” says Hood. “I kept thinking: don’t trip. Eventually, I got used to it.”

carving chateaubriand steaks

She says her favorite plane to work on was the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. “Domestic, only Eastern Airlines and TWA flew it. It was a very affordable and functional wide body plane 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 on that plane.”

Flying was still glamorous at the time, she says.

“People dressed to fly and remembered the food well. It’s really different from today. I can only compare it to being in a nice hotel, or perhaps on a cruise ship. Nothing was plastic and the plane was super cool,” says Hood, who remembers donning his Ralph Lauren-designed uniform and carving cooked-to-order chateaubriand steak for first-class passengers, who could also choose between Russian caviar and chicken bisque. lobster to accompany your Dom Perignon champagne.

Not everything was a bed of roses. Smoking on board was widespread and for flight attendants it was a nightmare.

“If you went on a five-day trip, which wasn’t unusual, you had to pack a whole separate uniform because it smelled so much like smoke,” says Hood. “Boy, was I glad when that stopped. The front rows of each section were considered non-smoking, but the whole plane was filled with smoke because you couldn’t contain it, it was ridiculous.”

And the Mile High Club? “It wasn’t uncommon on international flights to see a man go to the bathroom and a minute later his seatmate joins him, or some version of that,” says Hood. “It didn’t happen on every flight, but you saw it.”

“International flights were generally not as crowded as they are now, so in those five-seat middle sections on a 747, you could see a couple lift the armrests, grab a blanket and disappear under it. I can’t say what they were doing, but it looked suspicious.”

As for flirting with passengers or invitations to go out with flight attendants, it was also common. “I dated passengers, but that was disastrous. It was never what I had envisioned. But in 1982, I met a guy on a flight from San Francisco to New York. He was sitting in 47F – and I dated him for five years.

an empowering work

Hood has seen his fair share of bizarre things on board. “The weirdest thing would definitely be the woman in first class who appeared to be nursing her cat. I mean, I can’t say this was actually happening, but she had the cat on her chest.

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

That said, routine sometimes kicked in, and not every flight was a wonderful concentrate of adventure and glam.

“I would say the job was 80% fun and 20% boring. On some flights, especially the ones that weren’t very crowded, there was a lot of time to fill. You can only serve people so much food and drink and show so many movies. I made work fun. I loved talking to people. I loved the feel of it. I still love to fly today,” says Hood.

She says it was really possible to visit and experience the cities she traveled to. “Sometimes your layover was too short or you were just tired, but most of the time, the city was right around the corner. I took advantage of that a lot by flying internationally.”

She quit her job to focus on her writing career in 1986, and by that time, things had changed. Deregulation, which removed federal control over everything from fares to routes, took effect, changing aviation forever.

Planes now have more seats and the cabin is no longer so pleasant, but the act of flying has also been democratized and made available to a much larger portion of society.

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

“Flight attendants are a force. They are highly unionized. They are independent. In the cockpit, they make all the decisions. They have to troubleshoot. They are there for emergency supplies. They land in cities where they don’t know anything or anyone and find their way.

“It’s such empowering work, but it’s sexist work. By itself, it’s just as contradictory today as it was when I started it,” she says.

However, she recommends it as a career option.

“I was 21 when I was hired and it has given me confidence, poise and the ability to think for myself,” she adds. “To take the helm of that plane and, as soon as I got off, walk into a city and feel completely at home – or at least figure out how to feel at home there.

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