Finally back from holiday, and managed to scan and OCR some of 'Star Dust Falling'. Maybe not quite as juicy as my original 'Have you heard what some of the BSAA Stargirls used to get up to?!' suggested though!
'Even the stewardesses were called Stargirls. On this flight (BSAA's inaugural, on 1 Jan 1946) it was a young woman called Mary Guthrie, for whom the job was a bit of a comedown given her expertise. During the war she had been a pilot, ferrying aircraft between workshops and airfields. Now, in peacetime, she had to take what she could get, and upperclass skivvying for BSAA at least promised travel and had a certain cinematic glamour.
It didn't promise comfort. The cabin was just 1.82 metres wide and 1.9 metres high. At the front, behind the flight deck, was a cramped galley from where the girls, sometimes in pairs, usually working alone, were to serve defrosted meals called 'Frood', which had been prepared by the Lyons Tea House company. It was, the Stargirls would all eventually agree, pretty foul stuff. Most of them would avoid eating the hideous versions of chicken a la king or veal blanquette prepared for the passengers. Instead they made do with endless cups of tea sweetened with condensed milk, or the soup and orange juice which they carried in vacuum flasks for the passengers. At first washing up the china - and it always was china - was a chore. There was just a sink with cold water and no detergent, nor anywhere to put the dishes when they were done. Only later would the company start offloading the unwashed crockery at each stopover. As to drink, there was a box bar containing spirits plus a good supply of raw Chilean red wine which, for some reason, the passengers didn't appreciate. As time passed and the flights became routine, some of the more worldly Stargirls took to finishing off the bottles in the galley during the endlessly dull stretches when there was nothing to do, filling their mouths with peppermints afterwards to hide the smell.
And then there were the opportunities for free enterprise. The Stargirls and crew were paid their expenses at the rate of 17 Argentinian pesos to the pound, but in the change shops of Buenos Aires you could get a rate of 10 pesos. Those with Spanish and initiative in equal measure would make for the change shops to cash up the moment they landed. When BSAA routes extended to the West Indies one Stargirl called Jean Fowler, an Anglo-Argentinian who had taken the job to avoid going back to teaching after years in the women's auxiliary air force, discovered there was profit to be made elsewhere. She could pick up bottles of Johnny Walker and Black Label whisky in the grocery shops of Bermuda for five shillings. She then resold them in the nightclubs of Santiago, Chile, for the equivalent of £8. She bought beautifully stitched crocodile handbags, just the one a trip, to be resold in Britain at a massive profit, and even a fur coat, which she claimed to British customs was her own. Half a century later she looks back at her life of petty crime, shifting contraband back and forth across the borders of Latin America, with curiosity. 'Frankly I don't know why every girl didn't do it,' she says. 'It was so simple. But then they didn't all have a lot of gumption.' To work as a Stargirl for BSAA you had to be unmarried and of 'a certain class'. The airline only wanted what they defined as 'nice girls' and while some like Jean had come to adulthood during the curious freedoms of the war, for many others BSAA was their first job after leaving home. They would no sooner have taken to a little bit of smuggling on the side than they would have sworn in church.'
And this further extract from 'Two Feet In The Air':
Most of (the Stargirls) came directly to the airline from the W.A.A.F. or W.R.N.S. and some of them spoke Spanish or Portuguese having originally been volunteers from South America. B.S.A.A. was one of the first British airlines to employ stewardesses and there were considerable numbers of applicants for the few vacancies. Their pay was pitifully low, under three pounds a week. One of them related to me an account of her interview prior to her acceptance by the airline. She was told very bluntly that she would always have her own room when on service and a key to lock it. Accordingly the Company did not wish to hear of any complaints by girls of propositions by amorous pilots. Girls came cheaply and were easily replaced. Good licensed pilots were a rare breed and would not be dispensed with for frivolous reasons. "On my first trip," she said, "I locked the door and wedged a chair against the lock but nothing untoward threatened. So next trip I just locked the door. After my third trip my morale was really shattered. I gave up locking the door and took to looking up and down the passage and wondering what everyone else was doing'.
Can scan and OCR plenty more if anyone is interested - 'Two Feet In The Air' has quite a bit of detail about BSAA. Just check out the pictures of how BSAA's Ops HQ and the passenger handling marquee at LHR looked in 1947! Puts T5 to shame, doesn't it?!