Originally Posted by FWAAA

As I posted a few weeks ago, that is probably changing as we speak. The 1970s saw the elimination of age/weight/gender restrictions on FAs, and many FAs saw that as a huge advance for (primarily) the women's movement. No longer would FAs fly a few years while they were single; now they could do it for the rest of their working careers.

I've never been convinced that was a positive development for US airlines. An entry-level job requiring no education beyond high school that was really not suitable for parenting (given the demands that they be gone for several days in a row) now paid enough to keep them around even as they turned 30, 35, even into upper-middle-age. Lots of senior FAs are in their 50s and 60s, with the rare examples of FAs flying well into their 70s and even early 80s.

Don't get me wrong: FAs perform valuable functions in case the airplane must be evacuated quickly. That's an extremely rare event. So rare that it might fail any rational cost-benefit analysis. So airlines continue to require them to serve beverages (and to a much lesser degree, food) to the passengers to fill the time between routine takeoffs and landings. Additionally, the FAA continues to require them to infantilize the passengers by constant harping about "safety" regulations that might fail the same cost-benefit analysis as above.

Now that FA pay is being whacked at all airlines except for WN (and their time is probably coming), we might see the "profession" of flight attendant return to its roots: something that unattached young men and women do after high school (or college, since many FAs have degrees) until they "settle down" and desire to earn more than the paltry FA wages. Flight attendant isn't a career any more than waitress or busboy.

It's an entry-level job. It's something that capable people do when they're young and something that less-capable people do as they age (if they can't or don't wish to qualify for anything else). For instance, college kids work summers at theme parks and on cruise ships. But that's something most grow out of as they age. 'Cause each year, there's a whole new crop of eager, enthusiastic college kids to take their place. Same thing with Flight Attendants.