During her career, Ann Hood shared that she once saw a passenger breastfeeding a cat and another person riding a bicycle down the aisle of a Boeing 747.
Ann Hood is an American novelist and former flight attendant for TWA Airlines in the 1980s. Recently, she shared special insights with CNN about the work she did during the tail end of the golden age of air travel.
According to Hood, when she was hired, flight attendants were still seen merely as beautiful decorations on airplanes. (Source: CNN)
Ann Hood grew up in Virginia, USA, and had the opportunity to witness the first flight of the Boeing 707—the vehicle credited with ushering in the era of jet passenger travel. At the age of 11, after moving to Rhode Island with her family, she read a 1964 book titled “How to Become a Flight Attendant” and immediately made a significant decision about her future. “Although the book had heavy sexist content, it still attracted me because it talked about a job that would allow me to see the world, and it seemed like a good fit for me,” she shared.
After graduating from college in 1978, Hood applied to various airlines. “I think 1978 was a really interesting year because many women who attended college with me were straddling old ideas and molds with one foot in the future. It was a time that created challenges for young women in their choices.”
At that time, “flight attendant” was a new term introduced. This was a linguistic upgrade, as the job was now described in a gender-neutral way, replacing the terms “stewardess” and “steward” that had been used before. Additionally, the U.S. government was about to ease the strict regulations imposed on domestic aviation, paving the way for change.
However, during this transitional period, air travel was still fundamentally a glamorous and complex service, where flight attendants were regarded as “beautiful and sexy decorations,” as Hood described.
Ann Hood was hired as a flight attendant for TWA. (Source: CNN)
Prejudices about female flight attendants wearing super-short skirts to flirt with male passengers still existed and were popularized through books like “Coffee, Tea, or Me?” This memoir was allegedly written by two flight attendants based on real events, published in 1967. However, it was later discovered that the book was a fictional creation by Donald Bain, a marketing executive at American Airlines.
Weight Limits and Losing Jobs for Marriages
To become a flight attendant in earlier times, candidates had to accept some awful requirements, such as being within a certain age range and facing dismissal if they got married or had children. These requirements had been lifted by the time Hood became a flight attendant, but other rather terrible conditions still existed.
The most shocking requirement was that female flight attendants had to maintain their weight as of their hiring date. “All airlines sent a chart along with your application. They looked at the height and maximum weight of applicants, and if you didn’t meet the criteria, they wouldn’t even interview you,” Hood shared.
However, once hired, female flight attendants were also not allowed to gain weight, at least this was true for TWA. Hood stated that she had to maintain a weight lower than the maximum limit by about 5 kg at the time of hiring. “My roommate was fired for gaining weight. What was really terrible was that this regulation wasn’t lifted until the 1990s,” Hood noted.
Hood was one of 560 people hired by TWA—one of the largest airlines in the U.S. at that time—in 1978. She and her friends had to beat out approximately 14,000 other applicants for a job. TWA was later acquired by American Airlines in 2001.
Hood recounted that her job began with a stressful training course in Kansas City. Here, flight attendants learned a great deal, from the names of aircraft parts to emergency medical procedures, as well as safety protocols for seven different types of aircraft. This list included the Boeing 747, which was once regarded as the Queen of the Skies.
For Hood, the Boeing 747 was a daunting aircraft due to its size. The plane was equipped with a spiral staircase leading to the first-class cabin, which required her to go up and down frequently, making it easy to trip while moving. Meanwhile, her favorite plane was the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. At that time in the U.S., only Eastern Airlines and TWA operated this model. The L-1011 TriStar was a wide-body aircraft with a convenient layout of two seats on each side of the cabin and four in the middle, allowing for easy passenger movement. Passengers were very pleased with this aircraft.
She stated that flying during that time was still something very glamorous and luxurious. “Passengers often dressed nicely when flying, and they remembered the in-flight food positively. Air travel back then was truly different from today. Flying then felt like being in a luxury hotel, or perhaps on a cruise ship,” Hood shared, adding that she once wore a uniform designed by Ralph Lauren and served guests dishes such as prime rib or Russian caviar and lobster paired with Dom Perignon champagne.
Strange Experiences on the Job
But the job was not all rosy. Smoking on planes was very common at that time, and it was a nightmare for flight attendants. “If you were on long tours, which was not uncommon then, you had to pack an extra uniform because after each flight, you would smell like smoke,” Hood shared.
So what about sensitive romantic encounters on planes? “It wasn’t unusual on international flights at that time to see a man go into the bathroom, and a minute later, the woman sitting next to him would follow in,” Hood recounted, adding that such occurrences weren’t frequent but did exist.
“International flights in the past were often not as full as they are now, so in the middle section of five seats on the Boeing 747, you could see a couple pushing the armrests up, pulling a blanket over themselves, and disappearing inside. I can’t say what they were doing, but it seemed like a suspicious activity,” Hood shared with CNN.
Passengers flirting or asking flight attendants out was also quite normal back then. “I did go on dates with passengers, but they often ended in disaster. It was never like I imagined. Except for one time in 1982, I met a guy on a flight from San Francisco to New York. He was sitting in seat 47F, and I ended up dating him for five years,” she said.
TWA was once a major airline but was acquired by American Airlines. (Source: CNN)
Throughout her working years, Hood witnessed many strange things on airplanes. For instance, on one flight, she saw a woman in first class seemingly breastfeeding her cat. In another case, a passenger rode a bicycle down the aisle on a Boeing 747 flight from the U.S. to Frankfurt, Germany.
“I can say that this job had 80% excitement and 20% boredom. On some flights, especially those that weren’t full, there was a lot of time to fill. You could only serve passengers so much food and drinks and watch so many movies. I made my job more interesting by talking to passengers. I enjoyed the sense of interaction,” Hood recounted.
In 1986, Hood left her job as a flight attendant to focus on her writing career. By then, the airline industry had changed significantly. The deregulation of the airline industry by the government, which relaxed control over everything from ticket prices to flight routes, had a profound impact, permanently altering air travel in the U.S.
Hood stated that she has never stopped being proud of her career in the skies. She also encourages anyone who is eligible to try this job. “I was just 21 years old when I was hired, and the job gave me confidence, poise, and independent thinking. I think a few years as a flight attendant can change your life,” she shared.
