Bikinis, Kinky Boots & Hot Pants ... Recruiting Flight Attendants

"The girls must be able to wear kinky leather boots and hot pants or they don't get the job."
A Southwest Airlines male executive in the 1970s



"The airline industry was predominantly male-orientated; chauvinism reigned. Fashion initiatives, such as those introduced by Braniff and Alitalia, reinforced the notion that the aircraft's aisle was something of a stewardess's catwalk in the air, largely for the benefit of the male travellers, not to mention the occupants of the cockpit. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, art imitated life or perhaps it was the other way round, as film screenplays of the time created stereotypes of heart-throb captains and swooning stewardess characters. In real life, dozens of captains and first-officers married stewardesses and dozes of jet-setting, high-powered businessmen plucked trophy wives from the ranks of the stewardess legion. The airline industry opportunistically lapped up the sex theme and served it to their clients. Southwest Airlines of Texas admitted that "sex sells seats" and to prove it clad their stewardesses in thigh-exposing hot pants and knee-high, brilliant-white leather "kinky" boots."
Lovegrove (2000)



Southwest Airlines Co. was founded by Rollin King and Herb Kelleher in 1967. Kelleher studied Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) and used their ideas to create the corporate culture at Southwest, such as the theme "Long Legs And Short Nights". In fact, Southwest Airlines was called a photocopy of PSA.
Flight attendants (at the time called hostesses) were dressed in hot pants and go-go boots - otherwise they wouldn't get the job. "A committee including the same person who had selected hostesses for Hugh Hefner's Playboy jet selected the first flight attendants, females described as long-legged dancers, majorettes and cheerleaders with 'unique personalities'." (via) An inverse relationship between Southwest Airlines and Playboy made headlines in 2007 when a Southwest Airlines employee told 23-year-old college passenger Kyla Ebbert that her outfit was too revealing to fly with the family airline. Ebbert went public, Playboy contacted her attorney, Ebbert posed for Playboy under the heading "Legs in the Air".  (via, via)

"We don't have a dress code at Southwest Airlines, and we don't want to put our employees in the position of being the fashion police but there's a fine line you walk sometimes in not offending other passengers."
"It is quite humorous, given that we were born with hot pants. We're trying to be good-humored about all this."
Gary Kelly, Southwest Chief Executive 

That was in 2007. In 2009, Southwest Airlines plastered a large photograph of a model (not a sportswoman) in a bikini - who spans the length of the fuselage to about Row 23 - on its 737s to promote Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit edition. Not all reactions were positive (via).




Above: photographs of the one-year anniversary celebration

"Our inflight magazine at the time, Southwest Airlines Magazine, had a monthly feature called “Hostess of the Month,” and our Flight Attendants were photographed in a variety of scenic spots all across Texas. The layout included a Playboy-style interview (but not Playboy-style photos!) with similar questions. We really have come a long way since then."
Brian Lusk




Today, Southwest Airlines has an "Affirmative Action Program": "We desire to maintain a heightened awareness of providing equal employment opportunities to women and minorities in every facet of our business through the Affirmative Action Program. This focus includes recruitment, hiring, training, promotions, and Company sponsored program. It is also the policy of Southwest Airlines to provide equal opportunity to all individual and not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status, national origin, genetic information, disability, or veteran status." (excerpt)



Times have changed. At least in the Southwest. In Northeast China, recently more than 1.000 Chinese women posed in bikinis at a beauty competition to get a job either in the fashion industry or the aviation industry. Representatives from both industries observe the women who are "elegant, slim, have sweet voice and have no scars in the exposed part of their skin" and recruit their models and flight attendants based on these criteria (via). By the way, Thailand's Nok Air is not a role model either, neither is Ryan Air (read).



Southwest Airlines commercials on YouTube:
::: Southwest Airlines commercial (1972): WATCH
::: Southwest Airlines commercial "You didn't have hostesses in hotpants. Remember?" (1972): WATCH



- Lovegrove, K. (2000). Airline. Identity, Design and culture. London: Lawrence King Publishing
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