The Thanksgiving holiday in America is the biggest travel holiday of the year, by many measures. Flying can be challenging enough at regular times of the year - dealing with a surge of travelers can really strain the system. Deregulation of the airlines, fuel costs, security theater with the TSA, ever shrinking seat space and add-on charges, the hunt online for the best ticket deals... To those of you who have spent the last few days scrambling to make connections and deal with weather, and are not relishing the gauntlet of return travel, let me offer up some visions of Air Travel Past.
The phrase "Golden Age" is deceptive. Something is seldom recognized as a golden age until it is past, and it's often pretty subjective. The nasty, annoying bits tend to fade in memory - if they were even acknowledged, while the few enjoyable bits tend to become enhanced in retrospect. Distance in time can also add an exotic aspect to the no longer commonplace. Follow me past the Orange Omnilepticon for a look back at what once was, including a few things that were 'under the radar' so to speak.
The introduction of jet engine propelled airliners into service transformed air travel. Jets added speed, made weather less of an issue when it could be flown over at high altitude, and seemed like an exciting technological leap. There was an air of novelty - glamour even. And also opportunity for farce. It was a sexier time - and more than a little sexist by today's standards. It was an element of the culture of the times - the idea of "the Jet Set" - glamorous people with money living exciting lives of travel to exotic places at the drop of a hat.
Before it was all about finding the cheapest tickets and packing as many people as possible into metal tubes with wings, airlines used to compete on style. That's why you would see airlines trying to be visually exciting from the moment when you arrived at the airport. (An era that is being demolished.) There was this concept called the romance of air travel. Flying wasn't just about getting from A to B - in some ways it was a kind of performance art.
And to better set the stage for the show, airlines made sure the 'cast' the audience would be spending the most time with was dressed to impress. This BBC Culture article takes a look at The Golden Age of the Air Hostess. Looking at the gallery of uniforms, it's obvious that a lot of effort went into presenting an image back then. And sometimes it was pretty obvious what that image was about, as this CNN Travel photo gallery shows.
While the cover and blurb of The Jet Sex plays up the worst of this, the author had a more balanced perspective as spelled out in a NY Times article by Joe Sharkey.
Sexism was a strong undercurrent. There also was an element of propaganda during the early stages of “cold war mudslinging,” Ms. Vantoch writes. American stewardesses were depicted as trim, pretty and consumer-oriented, while “Communism bred dour, chubby stewardesses who were, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, ‘less inclined to pamper the clientele’ ” on the Soviet airline Aeroflot, she writes.
Still, “the profession simultaneously offered a space for these young women to see themselves as capable, independent and ambitious professionals,” as well as “a unique opportunity for young women to travel far beyond the domestic arena and to forge a strong female-oriented community,” Ms. Vantoch writes.
The book’s payoff, I thought, comes in a chapter with the subheading, “Pretty Women Fight Back.” Flight attendants, as stewardesses came to be known, forged major accomplishments through unionization. Many ridiculous, racist and sexist rules went away. Pay improved. Career paths firmed. Well into the 1990s, “flight attendants continued to forge new legal rights for working women in America,” according to Ms. Vantoch.
Remember, the airlines were all riding on the buzz of flying on jet airliners - it was what was inside that they used to differentiate themselves. (Although at least one found
the outside could be used as well.) And it's not as though marketing on the basis of "sex sells" has gone away today either.
On a much darker note, the exploitation of attractive young women to sell airline tickets was also a response to another story, less well known, which also combines elements of sex and labor-management conflict. From a review by Amanda Armstrong:
In his new book, Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants, Paul Tiemeyer collects stories about, generally, white men who worked—or tried to work—as flight attendants for U.S. airlines.
...The wartime boom in production of DC-3 planes set up the conditions for a massive post-war expansion of commercial airline travel. Many war planes were decommissioned and auctioned off at low rates to the airlines.
The companies initially hired significant numbers of male veterans as flight attendants. But they changed course after a wave of labor agitation and unionization—particularly among male workers—won increases in flight attendants’ seniority and pension benefits.
The airlines were able to continue imposing restrictive terms on women, including bans on marriage and mandatory retirement at 32 or 35. So it became advantageous to hire more women, who wouldn’t receive as many seniority raises or pension benefits before being forced out.
It wasn't just about labor organizing or exploiting women. As the title suggests, homophobia was an element. Again from
Armstrong's review:
As Tiemeyer presents the story, these trends coincided in the mid-1950s with a period of particularly virulent homophobia, which brought about the near-total exclusion of men from new flight attendant positions.
He focuses particularly on the aftermath of the 1954 murder of Eastern Airlines flight attendant William Simpson. Upon landing in Miami, it seems Simpson was solicited for sex—by a man who, with an accomplice, robbed and fatally shot him.
The two men presented an argument in court that would later become known as the “gay panic defense”—that Simpson, by making a pass at them, provoked them to panic and kill him. They were ultimately acquitted of murder. Miami newspapers took the occasion to publish a series of phobic exposés on the local underground gay scene.
Tiemeyer attempts to show—in part by interpreting euphemistic or opaque airline management memos and through oral history interviews with former airline managers—that this murder and its aftermath, and similar instances of violence and public scrutiny, contributed to managers’ increasing reluctance to hire men as flight attendants, on the assumption that men applying for the job were more likely to be gay than those applying for other jobs.
That was then; this is now. The 'romance' of flying isn't quite the same when you're being stuffed into an airplane these days where "Bus" is part of the aircraft name. If the sexism and homophobia are being toned down, the labor issues haven't gone away.
Sharkey's article at the NY Times was prompted by the response he got from an earlier article which described flight attendants as "complainers".
Many letters of complaint ensued from flight attendants. A typical one, from Barbara Vandehei, began, “We are not complainers.” The writer then described many gripes, including one that her airline had just reduced the number of flight attendants working its 737s to three from four.
“I am one of those flight attendants going to Dallas picking up trash, holding five cans and reminding everyone who didn’t listen to the announcement to put their seat belts on and turn off their electronic devices,” she wrote. “So before you write that we are all complainers, come walk a mile in my shoes with a full 737 with only three of us working.”
emphasis added
This quote from Vantoch, whom Sharkey contacted for his apology followup, puts it in perspective:
“My impression now when I fly is that flight attendants are really safety professionals,” said Ms. Vantoch, who said that she interviewed hundreds of former and current flight attendants. “They’re so highly trained, and they have so much to get done in such a short amount of time. The bags, so many passengers on every plane — it’s almost a different profession from what it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”
emphasis added
So, if you're traveling this holiday season, best of luck with your plans. If there's not as much 'glamour' and you're finding it a less than pleasant experience at times, remember those for whom it's not just an occasional experience. It's their job and it's not getting any easier. Be sure to thank them.
And for your further enjoyment, a surreal video for those of you who remember the Jet Set and the excitement of traveling to exotic places.
http://youtu.be/...
11:38 AM PT: Update: This comment is worth a read - it spells out how deregulation of the airlines has ended up not being the great deal deregulation is always supposed to be.
11:39 AM PT: Update: This comment is worth a read - it spells out how deregulation of the airlines has ended up not being the great deal deregulation is always supposed to be. http://www.dailykos.com/...