Realities of being a flight attendant

Once “handmaidens” in an industry mile-high on glam, the women formerly known as “air-hostesses” have changed their image as well as their job title. And if you thought flight attendants were getting older, you would be right too.

With the job now viewed increasingly as a profession, turnover is not as high as it once was.
The average job tenure of flight attendants is currently more than seven years and rising. But female flight attendants’ fight for rights and legitimacy as serious working women has been a long and tough one.
In fact, it was only in the 90s that attendants saw off discriminatory practices on the subject of weight. (Even today some airlines still restrict the size of their female crew – Air India recently sent some crew on diets.)
But just as the flight attendant evolved from the “air-hostess”, cost-cutting and murderous competition mean the airlines are starting to woo back the “dolly birds”.
According to one industry expert, the airlines are deliberately making the job harder for longer-serving crew in the hope they will quit and make room for fresher, cheaper staff.
“Thousands of flight attendants have left their jobs since the 9/11 terror attacks because of layoffs, pay cuts and the emotional toll of a high-stress job,” claims sociologist Drew Whitelegg in a new book.
“Their replacements earn much less, have less job security and face working conditions that make it difficult to balance work and family obligations,” explains Whitelegg in Working the Skies (New York University Press).
“Basically the airlines are trying to get back to the pre-unionised days when women were hired on youth and looks, and inexperience meant wages were low,” she says.
“Just look at the job profiles of cabin crew for Ryanair and EasyJet – becoming a stewardess is like taking a gap year. ‘Go wild, and travel while you are young for a few months’ is the message.”
Older cabin crew, such as the 85-year-old Iris Peterson who retired from United Airlines last month, will not be happy about the return to old values. But with airline bankruptcies and security uncertainties, the job may lose its hard-earned professional status if some bosses get their way.
The tactic of hiring pretty, easily-fired young things proved popular with the mostly male travellers of the post-war years when male stewards were replaced by “sky girls”, who then made way for the “air-hostess”, who appeared to promise more than service with a smile.
In 1950s north America, where commercial flights really took off, these air-hostesses were, says Whitelegg, “mostly farmers’ daughters and, of course, white.
Then in the 60s came the era now known as ‘coffee, tea, or me?’.
“This suggestion of sexual (appeal), played down now by airlines, and utterly revoked by the equal rights campaigns, still endures. It’s just much more subtle these days. Virgin cabin crew, for example, are supposed to have ‘Virgin flair’ because you can’t, these days, say your flight attendants are more sexy – but it amounts to the same thing.”
In Asia, where airlines seem to have fewer scruples about this connotation – and where arguably women find it harder to secure equal rights – the “air-hostess” has never really gone away. Singapore Airlines, for one, still emphasises the allure and youth of its female crew. While, in the West, older cabin crew are “high-profile, elder-woman role models” as Whitelegg puts it, in Asia the job is still perceived as glamorous and escapist.
As one of the few half-decent jobs available for educated, middle-class women that doesn’t mean being chained to a desk, the job of air-hostess still has cachet in Japan. So sought-after are these posts that often only the most accomplished graduates – in Japan you need a degree to be a flight attendant – get past the first interview. “In the Pacific Rim you see all the old practices living on and that indicates to me that such practices will come back here again,” says Whitelegg.
Airlines are using all kinds of tactics to encourage older staff to leave, says Whitelegg. “Uniform redesigns emphasise a sexy figure, which many older women don’t feel comfortable in.”
The industry is also stripping away incentives for seniority. “Flying hours have been increased, which can be absolutely knackering as you get older,” adds Whitelegg.
The answer, says Whitelegg, is for crew to reassert their status as safety experts, something that briefly made an impression on flyers after cabin crew heroics during the events of 9/11. Since those attacks, cabin crew are now also expected, on top of their other duties, to save passengers from an increasing number of drunks and would-be killers boarding our planes.
“As flight attendants carry out their new security roles, they are still expected to perform their original duties,” says airline cabin procedures expert and former flight attendant Diana Fairechild.
“Imagine asking marines patrolling enemy territory to simultaneously operate a refreshment stand, being sure to put forth a winning smile. ‘Would you like a pillow? Oh, excuse me, I have to wrestle a knife away from the passenger in 24A’.”

By Michael Fitzpatrick  and Marie-Claire