Are you a stewardess or a flight attendant? Young or aged? Discuss the article below

[flapsforty]

ZUZZ, you familiar with the expression ´teaching your granny to suck eggs´?
Apt in more ways than one here.
There´s more to aviation than the UK, there are airlines older than BA, and any CC worth their wings is familiar with the horrendous MAN accident.

Your posts are always a fruity combination of interesting snippets and deft sh!t-stirring. Add a touch of humour and they make for entertaining reading.
Still a load of sexist bollox though.

If everybody was so happy with the status quo, those stewardesses would have just accepted their fate and lived happily ever after.
But that´s not what happened.
They weren´t happy, and they fought long and hard to change their conditions of employment. Resulting in what we have now.

On the plus side women are no longer forced to leave a job they enjoy just because men dictate that marriage/age/motherhood are unwanted attributes. On the plus side too, lifetime careers for women; job & money security that provides a secure knowledge of independence.
The certainty that you will never be dependent on somebody else, but can provide properly for yourself and and a few kiddies if need be, has changed women´s lives profoundly for the better.

On the minus side, "middle-aged businessmen, wanting to be waited on by a young woman" are no longer assured of getting their rocks off on-board an airplane. On the minus side too, once the physical demands of the job become too great, FAs have to work until whatever pension age the politicos of their country have mandated.
Extra minus, their age makes it acceptable for people like Robert Coram and his like minded cronies to portray them as battleships, dreadnoughts, waspish grandmothers more interested in shopping and bone lazy galley gossipers. Sticks & stones; but nice it ain´t.
Two sides to every coin.


I was hired in the dark ages, under a 5 year contract with the provision of immediate dismissal should I decide to become pregnant. In those 5 years, a bunch of intrepid stewardesses took on the company and the politicians and got both the law and the contract changed.
I am grateful to them, and feel privileged to have a job that I am good at, that is interesting and challenging and never ever dull. A job where I was allowed to study and grow and learn how to use a great many different skills and talents. A job that takes me to all corners of the world and has given me a keen appreciation of how good life is in our own little corner of the globe.
It was and is an amazing adventure.

ZUZZ, we won´t see eye to eye on this. But we can both have our say and that´s a good thing.