\n \n \u201cI came of age when the jet age came of age,\u201d says Ann Hood, an American novelist and New York Times best-selling author, whose book \u201cFly Girl\u201d is a memoir of her adventurous years as a TWA flight attendant, right at the end of the Golden Age of air travel.\n <\/p>\n \n As a child, growing up in Virginia, she witnessed the first flight of the Boeing 707 \u2013 which ushered in the era of passenger jet travel \u2013 and watched Dulles airport being built.\n <\/p>\n \n At the age of 11, after she moved back to her native Rhode Island with her family, she read a 1964 book titled \u201cHow to become an airline stewardess,\u201d and her mind was made up.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAlthough it was sexist as hell, it enticed me because it talked about having a job that allowed you to see the world and I thought, well, that might work.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n When she graduated from college, in 1978, Hood started sending job applications to airlines. \u201cI think 1978 was a really interesting year, because many of the women I went to college with had one foot in old ideas and stereotypes, and the other foot in the future. It was kind of a confusing time for young women.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFlight attendant\u201d was a newly minted term, a gender neutral upgrade from \u201chostesses\u201d and \u201cstewardesses,\u201d and deregulation of the airline industry was around the corner, ready to shake things up.\n <\/p>\n \n But for the most part, flying was still glamorous and sophisticated and flight attendants were still \u201cbeautiful and sexy ornaments,\u201d as Hood puts it, although they were already fighting for women\u2019s rights and against discrimination.\n <\/p>\n \n The stereotype of stewardesses in miniskirts flirting with male passengers still endured, popularized by books like \u201cCoffee, tea, or me? The uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses\u201d \u2013 published as factual in 1967, but later revealed to have been written by Donald Bain, an American Airlines PR executive.\n <\/p>\n \n Some of the worst requirements to be hired as a flight attendant \u2013 such as age restrictions and losing the job in case of marriage or childbirth \u2013 had already been lifted, but others remained.\n <\/p>\n \n The most shocking one, perhaps, was the fact that women had to maintain the weight they had at the time of hiring.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAll airlines sent a chart with your application, you looked at your height and the maximum weight and if you did not fall within that, they wouldn\u2019t even interview you,\u201d says Hood. \u201cBut once you got hired, at least at TWA, you couldn\u2019t go up to that maximum weight. You had to stay at your hiring weight, which in my case was about 15 pounds less than my maximum limit.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMy roommate got fired over this. The really terrible thing about it, other than what it did to women, is that this restriction was not removed until the 1990s.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n 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.\n <\/p>\n \n The job started with a few days of intense training in Kansas City, where cadet 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 the Skies, the Boeing 747.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt was kind of terrifying, because it was so big \u2013 and the stairs, the spiral stairs that led to first class that you had to go up and down not infrequently,\u201d says Hood. \u201cI would keep thinking: don\u2019t trip. Eventually I got used to it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n She says her favorite plane to work on was the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. \u201cDomestically, only Eastern Airlines and TWA flew it. It was a very approachable, workable widebody plane with a lovely setup of two seats on each side and then four seats in the middle, so everybody could get out easily. Nobody was unhappy on that plane.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Flying was still glamorous at the time, she says.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cPeople dressed up to fly and remembered the food in a good way. It\u2019s really different from today. I can only compare it to being in a fine hotel, or maybe on a cruise ship. Nothing was plastic and coach was super nice,\u201d says Hood, who remembers donning her Ralph Lauren-designed uniform and carving chateaubriand cooked to taste for first class passengers, who also had a choice of Russian caviar and lobster bisque to go with their Dom Perignon.\n <\/p>\n \n It wasn\u2019t all a bed of roses. Smoking on board was widespread, and for flight attendants it was a nightmare.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you went on a five-day trip, which wasn\u2019t uncommon, you had to pack a separate whole uniform because you just would smell so much like smoke,\u201d Hood says. \u201cBoy, was I glad when that stopped. The front rows of each section were deemed non-smoking, but the whole plane was filled with smoke because you couldn\u2019t keep it from going backwards, it was ridiculous.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n What about the Mile High Club? \u201cIt wasn\u2019t uncommon on international flights to see a man go into the bathroom and a minute later his seatmate join him, or some version of that,\u201d says Hood. \u201cIt didn\u2019t happen on every flight, but you saw it.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cInternational flights usually weren\u2019t as full as they are now, so in those middle sections of five seats on a 747 you could see a couple put the armrests up, take a blanket and disappear under it. I can\u2019t say what they were doing, but it looked suspicious.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n As for passengers flirting or asking flight attendants out, it was also common. \u201cI did date passengers, but that was mostly disastrous. It was never what I had imagined. But in 1982, I met a guy on a flight from San Francisco to New York. He was sitting in 47F \u2013 and I dated him for five years.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Hood has seen her fair share of bizarre things on board. \u201cThe weirdest would definitely be the woman in first class who appeared to be breastfeeding her cat. I mean, I can\u2019t say that it was actually happening, but she had her cat to her breast.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAnd then the guy who flew the whole way in his tighty-whities and his dress shirt and tie, because he didn\u2019t want to wrinkle his pants for a job interview. Or the guy on a 747 in Frankfurt who was riding his bicycle down the aisle,\u201d she reveals.\n <\/p>\n \n That said, the routine would sometimes kick in, and not every flight was a wondrous concentrate of adventure and glamor.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI would say the job was 80% fun and 20% boring. In some flights, especially those that weren\u2019t very full, there was a lot of time to fill. You can only serve people so much food and so many drinks, and play so many movies. I made the job fun. I loved talking to people. I loved the feel of it. I still love flying today,\u201d says Hood.\n <\/p>\n \n She says it was indeed possible to actually visit and experience the cities she traveled to. \u201cSometimes your layover was really short or you were just tired, but for the most part, the city was right out the door. I very much took advantage of that when flying internationally.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n She left the 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, had come fully into effect, changing flying forever.\n <\/p>\n \n Planes became filled with more seats and coach stopped being as pleasant, but flying was also democratized and made available to a far larger share of society.\n <\/p>\n \n Hood says she is proud of her career in the skies.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFlight attendants are a force. They\u2019re highly unionized. They\u2019re independent. In the cabin, they make all the decisions. They have to troubleshoot. They\u2019re there for the emergency stuff. They land in cities where they don\u2019t know anything or anyone and find their way.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s such an empowering job, yet it\u2019s a sexist job. In itself, it is as contradictory today as the time in which I started it,\u201d she says.\n <\/p>\n \n Nevertheless, she recommends it as a career option.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI was 21 when I was hired, and it gave me confidence, it gave me poise, and the ability to think on my feet,\u201d she adds. \u201cTo take charge on that airplane, and once I got off, to walk into a city and feel completely at home \u2013 or at least figure out how to feel at home in it.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI don\u2019t know if it should be someone\u2019s life\u2019s work \u2013 if they want it to be that, great. But I think a few years working as a flight attendant could change your life.\u201d\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n <\/cite>\n<\/p>\nPhotos of vintage inflight dining experiences<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n Carving chateaubriand
\n<\/h2>\n![\"Hood's](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/220525103241-01-twa-flight-attendant.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill\")
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