Heroine of the Skies
One of the few areas of corporate growth in 1937 was the airline industry. Passengers increased to 1,100,000 that year, up from 474,000 in 1932. The introduction of the DC 2 in 1934 and the DC 3 in 1936 made flying much more comfortable because the planes could fly up to 20,000 feet, were faster, quieter and had much improved ventilation. Prior to this, the Ford Tri-Motor only reached 6,000 feet and the Boeing 80 14,000 feet, both had poor heating/cooling, and were unhealthy. It was not uncommon for air hostesses to contract TB and other diseases in these early planes due to inadequate air circulation. To qualify as an air hostess a woman generally had to be between the ages of 21 to 26, single, stand from five feet to five feet four inches, weigh no more than 115 pounds and be a registered nurse. If she married…like some of the air hostesses in this article…she was terminated. On cross country flights that required overnight stays, the air hostesses had to stay at a hotel in a different town than the one in which the pilots stayed, to avoid any suggestion of impropriety. Most of the passengers in those days were wealthy people and celebrities. While the air hostesses were forbidden to accept tips, they occasionally found money that was discretely left for them by new admirers. At the time of this article there were 270 air hostesses with four major airlines. The heroic actions of a TWA air hostess after a recent crash in the Alleghenies made the air hostess, in the mind of the public, the new “heroine of the skies.” The other two airlines, Pan Am and Eastern Airlines, continued to use stewards until the 1940’s.