LESLIE SCRIVENER
TORONTO STAR

The ideal Air Canada Flight Attendant candidate presents a well-groomed appearance which is enhanced by a pleasant and outgoing personality ... Above all, the Flight Attendant role is highly service-oriented and very vital to the airline's success.

- Job description for flight attendants on Air Canada's website


It's a lovely image of the well-mannered, patient hostess of the skies with buffed nails and upswept hair, offering coffee or tea and checking that seatbacks are in the upright position. Nowhere does it mention handcuffing troublesome drunks, preparing expectant mothers for emergency delivery at 30,000 feet, or trying to use an axe to kill a horse in the cargo hold (more on that later). It definitely doesn't mention getting 297 passengers safely out of a burning plane after a crash landing, as the cabin crew is being praised for doing at Pearson airport last Tuesday.

Perhaps safety is a dangerous word for airlines, as it might remind us there's some risk to boarding a plane. It's true that flight attendants spend most of their flying time sorting out the (ever-diminishing) niceties of air travel, and most enjoy and are proud of the service they provide. But they also are expected to spring into action in worst-case scenarios, and as the crash of Air France Flight 358 shows, the worst does happen.

Don Enns of the Transportation Safety Board summed up their duties last week, even as he called flight attendants by an outdated name: "Stewardesses are not hired as waitresses. They're hired for their safety expertise, and as an aside they serve coffee and dinner."

As some flight attendants like to say, "We're here to save your ..., not kiss your ...."

Which makes it interesting that there's a federal proposal to limit the ratio of passengers and flight attendants from one to 40, to one to 50, to harmonize Canadian regulations with those in the United States. France Pelletier, director of health and safety for the Canadian Union of Public Employees airline service division, believes one of the reasons the Air France crew got all passengers out safely was they had a full complement of 10, four more than the minimum required for that aircraft.

"That's four more to shout commands, control panic and open doors," said Pelletier.

(Most Canadian airlines forbid their flight attendants from talking to the media, but their unions are under no such restriction. Still, several Canadian flight attendants spoke to the Star, some of them on the condition that their names and employers not be identified.)

The first flight attendants started working in the U.S. in the 1930s. They were a hardy group, trained as nurses and outfitted in military-style uniforms. They were single and could join the airline only if they were younger than 25, weighed less than 115 pounds, and stood no taller than 5 feet 4 in. Their duties included hauling luggage, tightening screws on loose seats and fuelling planes.

A few decades later, flying had become a glamour job. The world's most famous fashion houses — Dior, Balenciaga, Pucci — designed their uniforms in the 1960s and 70s. The best-selling novel Coffee, Tea or Me? titillated with stories of beautiful, hard-partying stewardesses jetting between exotic locales. It was an exaggeration, but Pelletier remembers image being paramount in the 1970s.

"When I was hired we had to go for a grooming check" every shift, Pelletier says. "A supervisor would check your makeup, your hair, and your nails ... They even pinched our thighs to make sure we were wearing girdles."

The image issue is not entirely a thing of the past. Designer Richard Tyler was hired by Delta Airlines last year to put some zip in their uniforms. One of them, a red taffeta wraparound, was unveiled at a fashion show earlier this year.

When Pelletier visited the site of a TWA jet crash in New York, she saw a flight attendant's uniform burned on to a jump seat — and became a determined advocate for safer uniforms, ones made of natural fibres.


Most of all, the Flight Attendant's role is to anticipate the needs of our passengers, and offer these services in a friendly, courteous and willing manner. That may mean helping a person with a disability to his/her seat, warming a baby's bottle, or not disturbing a passenger who wants to be left alone.