Men and Women Feeling Discomfort During Flights

According to a study, significantly more women than men report flight anxiety, and significantly more women than men become "quite much" or "very much" more afraid of flying after having children. Situations that score highest are turbulence, terrorism, highjacking, collision, and foreign objects in the engine. Men feel more confident that airline companies do enough to ensure safety. There are, however, no gender differences when estimating the frequency of flight accidents and the mortality rate in airplane accidents.



- Ekeberg, O., Fauske, B. & Berg-Hansen, B. (2014). Norwegian airline passengers are not more afraid of flying after the terror act of September 11. The flight anxiety, however, is significantly attributed to acts of terrorism. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 55, 464-468. LINK

- photograph (Olympic Airlines, 1969, designed by Pierre Cardin) via

Presenting The Losers

Pretty good, aren't they? We admit it. And they're probably good enough to get a job practically anywhere they want.
But not as an Eastern Airline stewardess.
We pass up around 19 girls, before we get one that qualifies. If looks were everything, it wouldn't be so tough. Sure, we want her to be pretty...don't you? That's why we look at her face, her make-up, her complexion, her figure, her weight, her legs, her grooming, her nails and her hair.



But we don't stop there. We talk. And we listen. We listen to her voice, her speech. We judge her personality, her maturity, her intelligence, her intentions, her enthusiasm, her resiliency and her stamina.
We don't want a stewardess to be impatient with a question you may have, or careless in serving your dinner, or unconcerned about your needs.
So we try to eliminate these problems by taking a lot more time and passing up a lot more girls.
It may make our job a lot harder. But it makes your flying a lot easier.



"If this isn't the most sexist TV commercial ever, it's close."
Mike Mashon

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image (probably 1967) via

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
- photographs via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via

We have blondes from Barcelona

This nice little blonde from Barcelona will romance you all the way to Spain. And England. And France. And Germany. And...



The theory that all Spanish women are dark haired and flashing eyed is false. As false as the theory that Iberia flies only to Spain.
We have blondes from Barcelona. Redheads from Cadiz. And, of course, a liberal helping of the beautiful brunettes you pictured us having. Happily, they all have one thing in common. A quality of dignity and pride and romance that comes from being raised in a land of dignity and pride and romance.
These, the women of Iberia, are trained as Iberia's acclaimed training facilities in Madrid. But, really, their training begins at birth. And it reflects in the warm, thoughtful way you're cared for wherever you go around the world.
Call Iberia. Or see your Travel agent. We regret you mayn't specify our blonde from Barcelona. But, of course, Iberia specifies lovely ladies on every flight.

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image (1970) via

The Nurse Stewardess and the Rebel Airline

In the 1930s, "the" new job was created for women: the stewardess. She became to US-American girlhood what policemen, pilots, and cowboys had become to US-American boyhood. Ellen Church, a nurse and trained pilot who wanted to work for the airlines but could not since airlines did not consider hiring women as pilots, proposed hiring nurses - an idea that among others led to the feminisation of the cabin service. From the start, the history of this profession was marked by a restriction to white, young, single, slender, and attractive women ... for a long time. Some airlines only hired single women as marriage would detract their devotion to serving passengers and in addition interfere with their wifely duties. In the 1940s, weight rules were taken so seriously that supervisors suspecting a stewardess to have put on an extra pound could ask her to jump on a scale and make sure that she got rid of it (Barry, 2007). And women only was a strict policy - in 1971, a male applicant sued Pan American because he was denied employment (via).

 

Here and then there seem to be some setbacks. Last year, flight attendants of an airline complained because they were told not to put on more weight. Another airline requires even teeth, a husband and children ... Nevertheless, situation, image and job description have changed, the former stewardess became a flight attendant, some airlines have raised the age limit for recruits to 45 years, since 1980 the median age of flight attendants in the US rose from 30 to 44 (via).

In 1965, Emilio Pucci (1914-1992) designed the so-called Space Bubble Helmet for the "rebel airline" Braniff Airlines. The glass bubble domes were supposed to protect from rain. Braniff Airlines on YouTube: e.g. The End of the Plain Plane here, the envisioned future here and the Air Strip here (photos via and via).

 

Barry, K. (2007) Femininity in Flight. A History of Flight Attendants. Duke University Press