Flight attendants recall elegant days of air travel

Excited about boarding that plane for your upcoming holiday trip?

Didn't think so. But, as travelers once again prepare to subject themselves to the maddening, service-bereft, security-obsessed world that is modern commercial air travel, consider a time when boarding a flight wasn't something to be endured but, rather, something to be enjoyed.

Las Vegas is as good a place as any to recall the glory days of air travel because, Mark Hall-Patton says, we were a part of it.

"You've got to remember, we made it onto the commercial airways by 1926, with Western Air Express," notes Hall-Patton, administrator of the Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum at McCarran International Airport. "We never lost commercial air service after that."

Dubbing the '40s, '50s and '60s the glory days of commercial air travel is a subjective judgment. Some will argue that today's traveler can fly to more destinations, and at a cheaper price, than travelers even a decade or two ago.

Granted. But, don't elegance, service and just plain coolness count for something?

It was the mystique of air travel that attracted Myrna Edwards to a career as a flight attendant for American Airlines from 1965 to 1998.

"I never even got into an airplane until I'd already been hired by American," recalls Edwards, who lived in Washington, D.C., back then and was flown to New York City for a physical.

"I got out my hat and gloves and saw these ladies going up to shop (in New York City) for the day and come back in the evening and I thought, 'Wow, this is wonderful,' " Edwards says. "Then I walk in the plane, and who's sitting there but Bobby Kennedy. I thought, 'Wow, everything they say is true.'

"So, I was just in awe of the whole thing, and that's why so many people back then were in awe of the experience."

One reason commercial air travel was so awe-inspiring then was that relatively few could afford it.

"It wasn't really until we got DC-3s after World War II that commercial air travel got down to the point where a lot of people in the middle class could fly," Hall-Patton notes. "So flying still had an aura about it."

Carol Buchanan, a flight attendant for American Airlines from February 1960 to October 2001, says that, when she started flying, "rarely was a flight more than half-full. I think it was because of the price and because flying was fairly new for the masses at that time."

Because boarding a plane was such an uncommon event, passengers dressed to befit the occasion. Witness, Hall-Patton says, photographs taken in the '50s and '60s that show "everybody coming off the plane all dressed up.

"You wouldn't think of going to the airport in shorts and a T-shirt. That was just not done. You were going to wear a suit if you were a man, and a nice dress with heels and gloves if you were a woman.

"Really, that didn't end until the late '60s and into the '70s," Hall-Patton adds, "where you had the acceptance of much more casual (dress) in society and it began to affect the airlines."

Similarly, Buchanan recalls that flight attendants -- they were called stewardesses then, and they all were women -- were expected to wear tailored suits, white gloves, hats and heels.

Yet, at the same time, an airplane cabin also was a sort of egalitarian place where regular people sat next to celebrities. When Buchanan began flying, "everybody flew commercial," she says. "They didn't have private jets until many years later."

So, businessmen and vacationers would fly with everybody from pro basketball teams to entertainers. Alternatively, companies and teams might charter flights, using the airlines' own crews to staff them.

Sonnie Sims flew for American Airlines from 1962 until 2003 and, while working a charter flight for the Beatles in 1966, met and talked with Paul McCartney. Years later, she met him again when McCartney chartered an entire first-class cabin for his wife and kids.

"He was such a nice, down-to-earth guy, playing with his kids and giving them piggyback rides up and down the aisle," Sims says.

But a passenger back then would have felt important even if he wasn't a celebrity. For instance, attendants were expected to know every passenger by name, Buchanan says.

Then, at the end of the flight, "you were supposed to go by the door when they left and say goodbye to them by name," she adds. "I was never good at that."

Attendants even were encouraged to sit and talk with passengers during the flight, Buchanan notes.

"Later on, you became almost like a policeman: 'You will do this, you will put that under your seat, you will not smoke, you will not do this.' It was all rules and regulations and people, I think, still resent that."

Meanwhile, seats were roomier, cabins were smaller, and there were fewer passengers per flight, all of which combined to create a level of comfort today's travelers would envy.

"Even in coach, you could probably stick your legs out straight and not even touch the seat in front of you," Sims says.

Passengers were given "nice little boxes of toiletries," Hall-Patton says. "You would be given a flight bag with the logo of the airline on it."

Meanwhile, kids -- the few who flew, anyway -- would be given junior pilot or junior stewardess wings, Sims says, and, in those days before '70s hijackers and 9/11, might even visit the cockpit.

"They got to meet the captain, and sometimes the captain would put his hat on them and let them sit in his seat," Sims says.

That, it goes without saying, is inconceivable in today's world of security checkpoints, full-body scanners and -- new for this holiday season -- physical pat-downs that, in the '50s, would have been the functional equivalent of getting to second base.

And, airlines supplemented all of their friendly service with in-flight meals that they actually touted in ads. Some airlines "would brag about the chefs they used," Hall-Patton says.

Even though first-class back then still would receive the best amenities -- silverware and china, napkins, wineglasses -- coach passengers would receive a meal that, by today's standards, would be considered downright bacchanalian.

"Coach, obviously, was not as lavish, but it was still nice," Buchanan says.

On a route out of Chicago that Buchanan worked, she and other attendants served dinner from spinning salad bowls and a carving cart that rolled up the aisle.

"It was really beautiful service," she says. "One time I accidentally dropped the roast I was carving on the floor, and I said, 'I'll get the other one.' I had to wipe it off, and I brought it back, saying, 'Here's the other roast.' "

One odd touch, Sims adds: "Back in the early days we actually had a little pack of cigarettes with every tray. It was a little pack, usually you had either Marlboro or Winston, and there were four cigarettes in there. Back then, everybody smoked and after dinner they'd light up their cigarettes."

Edwards suspects this roster of amenities, and the feeling of comfort they helped to create, also helped to create more easygoing passengers.

"Passengers were just so much more relaxed," she says. "Either they were your businesspeople who were used to flying, or maybe they were your first-time flier and it was all a mystery to them and they were just in awe of everything."

Conversely, near the end of her tenure, Edwards says, "that seemed to change, because people were becoming demanding and irritable."

In retrospect, not everything about flying back then was necessarily positive. For instance, Hall-Patton says, airlines during the '60s, "went more toward selling the image of the stewardess -- that, 'I'm Brenda, fly me' type of thing."

And Buchanan notes that when she began her career, attendants couldn't be married and "you couldn't fly over the age of 32." (Buchanan herself was "secretly married" for five years during the '60s, before federal legislation ended all that.)

It's also true that commercial air travel today is within financial reach of more people than ever, and that air travel has become, more than buses or cars, many families' only realistic means of getting from here to a far-flung there. But travelers who bemoan the lack of niceties today also should consider the role they've played in killing them.

"It was a long process," Hall-Patton says, "but I think as society became more casual and value-oriented, I think that affected airlines. I think a lot of it really came in the '80s, as things became more and more, 'We want to get there and we want to get there quick.' "

So, airlines cut back, began charging for things that used to be free, and focused on making tickets as affordable as possible.

All of which relegates the glory days of air travel to something today's travelers can only dream about. And that, Hall-Patton agrees, is a bit sad.

Hall-Patton understands the business and societal forces that took us from there to here. But, he says, "there is a certain something that is lost.

"I'm not sure I'd want to go back to it, but there certainly is a nostalgia to it. I think there was just something nice about being pampered."

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.