In the early morning hours of Jan. 11, a hack shut down the FAA’s systems, grounding all flights nationwide. I had a flight that morning to Minneapolis–St.
TOM LEONARD: The 1960s and 1970s are often described as the Golden Age of air travel. In 1965 alone, a million women were interviewed for 10,000 jobs as sky girls on U.S. airlines.
From the beginning in 1930, when Ellen Church became the first "stewardess," female flight attendants labored under interesting and often chafing rules. So what happened? As author Nell McShane Wulfhart shows in The Great Stewardess Rebellion, there were a variety of pressures from inside and out.
Nell McShane Wulfhart discusses her new history of a labor movement, and James Kirchick talks about “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.”
Novelist Ann Hood, whose Fly Girl paints a picture of her time as a flight attendant, was a beneficiary of the fight by the women profiled in Nell McShane Wulfhart's book to be treated professionally.