(CNN) — “I got here of age when the jet age got here of age,” says Ann Hood, an American novelist and New York Occasions best-selling creator, whose newest e-book “Fly Woman” is a memoir of her adventurous years as a TWA flight attendant, proper on the finish of the Golden Age of air commute.
As a kid, rising up in Virginia, she witnessed the primary flight of the Boeing 707 — which ushered within the generation of passenger jet commute — and watched Dulles airport being constructed.
On the age of eleven, after she moved again to her local Rhode Island together with her circle of relatives, she learn a 1964 e-book titled “Find out how to grow to be an airline stewardess,” and her thoughts used to be made up.
“Even if it used to be sexist as hell, it enticed me as it mentioned having a role that allowed you to peer the sector and I believed, neatly, that would possibly paintings.”
When she graduated from school, in 1978, Hood began sending activity packages to airways. “I feel 1978 used to be a actually fascinating 12 months, as a result of most of the girls I went to university with had one foot in previous concepts and stereotypes, and the opposite foot sooner or later. It used to be roughly a complicated time for younger women.”
“Flight attendant” used to be a newly minted time period, a gender impartial improve from “hostesses” and “stewardesses,” and deregulation of the airline trade used to be across the nook, in a position to shake issues up.
However for essentially the most section, flying used to be nonetheless glamorous and complicated and flights attendants have been nonetheless “stunning and horny adorns,” as Hood places, it, even though they have been already combating for girls’s rights and towards discrimination.
The stereotype of stewardesses in miniskirts flirting with male passengers nonetheless continued, popularized through books like “Espresso, tea, or me? The uninhibited memoirs of 2 airline stewardesses” — printed as factual in 1967, however later printed to were written through Donald Bain, an American Airways PR government.
Weight limits
Probably the most worst necessities to be employed as a flight attendant — reminiscent of age restrictions and dropping the activity in case of marriage or childbirth — had already been lifted, however others remained.
Essentially the most stunning one, possibly, used to be the truth that girls needed to care for the burden they’d on the time of hiring.
“All airways despatched a chart along with your software, you checked out your peak and the utmost weight and in the event you didn’t fall inside of that, they would not even interview you,” says Hood. “However as soon as you were given employed, no less than at TWA, you could not cross as much as that most weight. You needed to keep at your hiring weight, which in my case used to be about 15 kilos greater than my most prohibit.
“My roommate were given fired over this. The actually horrible factor about it, rather then what it did to ladies, is this restriction used to be no longer got rid of till the Nineteen Nineties.”
Hood used to be one in every of 560 flight attendants, out of 14,000 candidates, employed in 1978 through TWA, then a significant service, got through American Airways in 2001.
The activity began with a couple of days of intense coaching in Kansas Town, the place cadet flight attendants would be told the entirety from plane section names to emergency scientific procedures, in addition to the protection protocols of 7 other plane. The listing integrated the Queen of the Skies, the Boeing 747.
“It used to be roughly terrifying, as it used to be so large — and the steps, the spiral stairs that resulted in first-class that you just needed to cross up and down no longer every now and then,” says Hood. “I’d stay pondering: do not commute. In the end I were given used to it.”
Carving chateaubriand
Hood’s favourite airplane used to be a Lockheed L-1-11 TriStar.
Christopher Deahr/Second Editorial/Flickr Imaginative and prescient/Getty Photographs
She says her favourite airplane to paintings on used to be the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. “Regionally, handiest Japanese Airways and TWA flew it. It used to be an overly approachable, workable widebody airplane with a good looking setup of 2 seats on every aspect after which 4 seats within the center, so everyone may get out simply. No one used to be unsatisfied on that airplane.”
Flying used to be nonetheless glamorous on the time, she says.
“Other people dressed as much as fly and remembered the meals in an effective way. It is actually other from nowadays. I will handiest evaluate it to being in a wonderful resort, or possibly on a cruise send. Not anything used to be plastic and trainer used to be tremendous great,” says Hood, who recalls donning her Ralph Lauren-designed uniform and carving chateaubriand cooked to style for first-class passengers, who additionally had a number of Russian caviar and lobster bisque to head with their Dom Perignon.
It wasn’t all a mattress of roses. Smoking on board used to be fashionable, and for flight attendants it used to be a nightmare.
“Should you went on a five-day commute, which wasn’t unusual, you needed to pack a separate entire uniform since you simply would odor such a lot like smoke,” Hood says. “Boy, used to be I happy when that stopped. The entrance rows of every segment have been deemed non-smoking, however the entire airplane used to be stuffed with smoke since you could not stay it from going backwards, it used to be ridiculous.”
What concerning the Mile Prime Membership? “It wasn’t unusual on global flights to peer a person cross into the toilet and a minute later his seatmate sign up for him, or some model of that,” says Hood. “It did not occur on each flight, however you noticed it.
“World flights in most cases were not as complete as they’re now, so in the ones center sections of 5 seats on a 747 it is advisable see a pair put the armrests up, take a blanket and disappear below it. I will’t say what they have been doing, however it seemed suspicious.”
As for passengers flirting or asking flight attendants out, it used to be additionally not unusual. “I did date passengers, however that used to be most commonly disastrous. It used to be by no means what I had imagined. However in 1982, I met a man on a flight from San Francisco to New York. He used to be sitting in 47F — and I dated him for 5 years.”
An empowering activity
Hood left the activity in 1986 to concentrate on her writing profession.
Ann Hood
Hood has noticed her fair proportion of abnormal issues on board. “The most eldritch would indisputably be the girl in first-class who gave the impression to be breastfeeding her cat. I imply, I will’t say that it used to be in fact taking place, however she had her cat to her breast.
“After which the man who flew the entire method in his tighty-whities and his get dressed blouse and tie, as a result of he did not wish to wrinkle his pants for a role interview. Or the man on a 747 in Frankfurt who used to be using his bicycle down the aisle,” she unearths.
That mentioned, the regimen would once in a while kick in, and no longer each flight used to be a wondrous pay attention of journey and glamor.
“I’d say the activity used to be 80% a laugh and 20% uninteresting. In some flights, particularly those who were not very complete, there used to be a large number of time to fill. You’ll handiest serve folks such a lot meals and such a lot of beverages, and play such a lot of motion pictures. I made the activity a laugh. I beloved speaking to folks. I beloved the texture of it. I nonetheless love flying nowadays,” says Hood.
She says it used to be certainly imaginable to in fact consult with and revel in the towns she traveled to. “Now and again your layover used to be actually quick otherwise you have been simply drained, however for essentially the most section, the town used to be proper out the door. I very a lot took good thing about that once flying across the world.”
She left the activity to concentrate on her writing profession in 1986, and through that point issues had modified. Deregulation, which got rid of federal keep an eye on over the entirety from fares to routes, had come absolutely into impact, converting flying eternally.
Planes was stuffed with extra seats and trainer stopped being as delightful, however flying used to be additionally democratized and made to be had to a a ways better percentage of society.
Hood says she is pleased with her profession within the skies.
“Flight attendants are a pressure. They are extremely unionized. They are impartial. Within the cabin, they make all of the choices. They’ve to troubleshoot. They are there for the emergency stuff. They land in towns the place they do not know anything else or somebody and in finding their method.
“It is such an empowering activity, but it is a sexist activity. In itself, it’s as contradictory nowadays because the time during which I began it,” she says.
Nonetheless, she recommends it as a profession possibility.
“I used to be 21 when I used to be employed, and it gave me self assurance, it gave me poise, and the power to suppose on my toes,” she provides. “To take price on that plane, and after I were given off, to stroll right into a town and really feel totally at house — or no less than determine the best way to really feel at house in it.
“I have no idea if it will have to be any person’s lifestyles’s paintings — if they would like it to be that, nice. However I feel a couple of years running as a flight attendant may alternate your lifestyles.”
