My Airport Operations

Most of us remember a time when air travel was a gentile, if not luxurious experience. Passengers were treated to complimentary cocktails, gourmet food served with monogramed silverware (as opposed to Tyco plastic sporks) and flight attendants seemingly drawn from the pages of Donald Bain's1960's best seller, "Coffee, Tea, or me"?¹.

While our collective memories may be tainted with more than just a "bit" of nostalgia, the reality of the evolving role of flight attendants seems now to have come full circle.


In the beginning

Those of us harboring fond memories of the days when flight attendants seemed to be taken from the pages of Playboy magazine, and our hours of travel were spent lost in the pages of less than academic fifty cent novels, owe our fantasies to a forward looking executive named Steve Simpson. It was the spring of 1930 when Simpson, of Boeing Air Transport (BAT), now United Airlines, was approached by a young nurse seeking to be a pilot for the fledgling enterprise. Though rejected for the position, Ms. Ellen Church, a Registered Nurse, posed several innovations to Simpson, among them, the idea of placing nurses onboard airplanes in order to quell the public's fear of this "newfangled" mode of transport. Comfort could be found by the flying public in the fact that each aircraft carried a Registered Nurse onboard – in essence a qualified "First Responder". On 15 May 1930 Ms. Church became the first flight attendant working the Oakland California to Chicago, Illinois route.

"The responsibilities of stewardesses in the early years were far from glamorous. In addition to accommodating the regular needs of passengers, stewardesses at times needed to haul the luggage on board, screw down loose seats, fuel planes, and even help pilots push planes into hangars. For their services, the first group of BAT stewardesses earned $125 a month".²

Despite the hardships, the job was one of the few open to women during the 1930's, and they applied for the position in droves. In December 1930, as Transcontinental and Western Airlines3 (later to become Trans World Airline- TWA) announced its intention to fill some 43 "stewardess" positions, more than 2,000 women quickly applied. By 1936, the industry itself had set the stage for the pop culture image of flight attendants to come some thirty years later. An article published in the New York Times of the day described the requirements for flight attendants in the following manner:

"The girls who qualify for hostesses must be petite; weight 100 to 118 pounds; height 5 feet to 5 feet 4 inches; age 20 to 26 years. Add to that the rigid physical examination each must undergo four times every year, and you are assured of the bloom that goes with perfect health.4


A time of transition

By the "swinging" sixties, popular culture, Hollywood and the industry as a whole had conspired to transform the professional "first responder" image of flight attendants, as envisioned by Simpson and Church, into voluptuous vixens, providing far more than simply cocktail and meal service 30,000 feet in the air. Movie and television portrayals of airline flight attendants seemed limited to buxom beauties in short, albeit designer uniforms catering to the high flying businessman's every whim.

While it is true, the "good time girl" image cultivated during this time was due in large part to the airlines themselves promoting the old adage, "sex sells". Fierce competition for passengers, a growing middle class with money to spend and high flying businessmen traversing the globe in pursuit of profit, led to cutthroat competition by the airlines for every passenger dollar.

In the day, most Western males drew their perception of Flight Attendants from the images and stories published in magazines such as Playboy, and Penthouse, reinforced by popular media advertising and slogans such as: Singapore Girl, "You're a great way to fly"; Air Jamaica's, "We make you feel good all over"; and Braniff's entry from the day: "Because even an airline hostess should look like a girl".5

However, the façade of pleasure and prosperity in the skies was soon to end. The global political scene had begun a tumultuous decade of aircraft hijackings and bombings which would carry on through the next twenty years. Political dissidents, Nationalists, Marxists and Religious Fundamentalists all saw air travel, aircraft and airlines as a viable tool of terror.6 The "swinging sixties" image of flight attendants as little more than eye candy or sexual surrogates rapidly gave way to their original role as 'first responders' in the skies. Recognizing this transition at the professional level, organizations such as the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA)7, have mounted an ongoing campaign of Media awareness and advocacy. Gone are the days of professional instruction in 'how to properly have a cigarette with a passenger" – replaced by in-service trainings in "situational awareness", interpersonal communication, and conflict resolution along with practical issues of Crew Member Self Defense.


Training and Preparedness

As recent history has shown, today's flight attendant must possess a broad range of knowledge and skills extending far beyond the requirements of 14 CFR 121,125 and 135. Cabin Crewmembers must be able to identify potential threats – in the form of individuals or situations--and act, long before some type of emergency response becomes necessary. Whether an unruly passenger, mentally ill traveler or professional terrorist, all pose a variety of threats to safety and security of the aircraft, its passengers and crew.

By design, a comprehensive training program must include aspects of individual environmental awareness, interpersonal communication and close quarter tactics. Relying on the mental rather than the physical, the training goal is to hone analytical skills of awareness and response, rather than commando-like tactical physical techniques.

A sample module curriculum of this type is illustrated below.

Conclusion

Given the cultural and political environment of our current times, it would appear over the past eighty plus years, we have now come full circle to recognize the role first purported by nurse Church in the 1930's , viewing Flight Attendants as true First Responders. As a footnote, too often we fail to recognize the long hours, hard work and countless sacrifices made by Cabin Crews of all airlines every day.


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References:

1. Bain, Donald, Coffee, Ta or Me?, Bantam Books, 21 November 1967, ISBN 0142003514,

2. http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/echurch.html

3. http://www.twasilverwings-kc.com/htdocs/TWA_historypage1.htm

4. The New York Times, pN1, April 12, 136

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmPLgv7TVOA&feature=player_embedded

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

7. http://www.afacwa.org/