My Former Life as a Flight Attendant - Braniff International

Sometimes one phone can turn your life completely around.

For months, I'd been working the late shift as receptionist in a hair salon and attending school in the  morning. My cosmetology training was nearly complete when I decided to take a short vacation. I had a job lined up as a hairstylist once I graduated beauty school and passed the State Bar Exam. 

One of my regular beauty school customers found out I was headed to Texas for a few days. She asked me to call her daughter while I was there. Long-distance calls used to be expensive while local calls were free. She gave me her daughter's business card with the phone number. Little did I know that phone call would change my life.

Once I settled in with the family in Texas, I gave the daughter a call. She was happy to hear news about her mother in Florida. We had a nice conversation. She was an executive in Flight Attendant services for a major airline. I mentioned that I'd always wanted to work as a flight attendant.

"Well, we're currently recruiting flight attendants." My heart skipped a beat. "But I'm not allowed to interview you."

"I understand," I told her somewhat disappointed.

"I'll ask someone to give you a call, but I can't promise anything."

I figured that was the end of it when the phone rang at my mom's house.

"This is Flight Attendant staffing," the caller announced. "Are you available for an interview tomorrow?"

Of course, I said yes. My mom and I immediately went shopping for an appropriate outfit to wear. All I had with me were vacation clothes. We had a great day shopping in downtown Fort Worth where she grew up.

The next day, I borrowed their car and headed to the airport. I weaved my way through a twisting maze at the huge airport, located the right building and found a good parking spot. Walking across the asphalt in the summer Texas heat, I could feel my hair and makeup withering.

The Interview

She asked about my work history and the reasons I wanted to be a flight attendant. I'd been a hostess and stand-in bartender at a couple of expensive restaurants and shared that experience. I'd also worked at banks and my cosmetology training was almost finished.

She also asked questions to evaluate my personality and suitability for the job like, "What would make you make a better flight attendant than someone else?"

 Despite my nervousness, I thought the interview went okay.

Once I got home, the phone rang again.

"Would you be available tomorrow for a group interview.?" There would be a panel of pilots, senior flight attendants, and training instructors that would interview several applicants at the same time. If we made it to the finals, we'd have individual interviews after the group session. Yes!

There was an advantage to not being the first to answer a question. We learned from the reactions of the panel what they didn't want to hear like, "I want to be a flight attendant because I just love people." They were sick of hearing that.

The challenge was to come up with something original after several others already answered the same question. When the group session finished, I was chosen for an individual interview.

Afterward, I resumed my vacation. That's when the phone rang again.

This call changed all my plans going forward. The friendly voice on the phone said I'd been selected to attend Flight Attendant Training starting in one month. A couple of days later, I flew home to Florida. I could hardly believe this happened, until the official offer letter arrived with the date to report for training. I was still in denial.

Over the next few weeks, I finished beauty school, quit my job at the salon, sold most of my belongings, and packed my car for the trip to Texas. Driving through Florida, my roommate and I stopped in Pensacola to take my State Board Exam for my cosmetology license. She'd come with me to be my hair model for the practical exam and flew back to Tampa after that was over. I continued the twelve-hundred-mile drive to Dallas alone.

I'd wanted to become a flight attendant for years. At twenty-one, I applied with Eastern Airlines. They didn't hire married applicants and I got a letter of rejection.

Once I became single again I applied again. This time, they sent a round-trip ticket to Miami for an interview. It took a couple of weeks before another rejection letter came in the mail.

At twenty-five, I applied with Northwest Orient Airlines and went for an interview in Minneapolis, Minnesota in winter time. There were only thirty positions available and they had 800 applicants. We were rushed through the process and told they would let us know the results. A few weeks later, another rejection letter came.

Training in Dallas at the Royal Coach

During the five-week training course, we lived in The Royal Dunfey's Hotel in Dallas. After breakfast, we were bused to the training facility on Lemon Avenue for classroom training and to practice emergency drills and CPR. 

We jumped out of second-story windows onto scorching hot evacuation slides, learned to use fire extinguishers on real fires and fumbled our way through dark airplanes to locate safety equipment. We trained to open exit window hatches. One test required us to open the door of a 747 which was five stories above the ground.

"Again!" the emergency procedures instructor would yell as we practiced pulling the emergency hatch off the mock-up airplane.

"Now toss that hatch on the seat and move those passengers along."

We spent hours practicing airline announcements, reading them from our manuals as required by the FAA. We worked in galley mock-ups learning how to use convection ovens and coffee makers. We served seven-course dinners on real dishes with glassware. We trained for a week on bartending skills learning cocktails and how to serve wine and make Cappuccino.

At night we studied our training manuals and memorized configurations for the fleet of Braniff jets. We formed groups and quizzed each other on airport codes and their abbreviations. We practiced and role-played for hours, but it was nothing like serving onboard a flight with real passengers.

After Graduation

Our travel assignments were based on seniority, the length of time we had with the airline, or within our class, our date of birth. Each month we bid on different flight schedules and those with fifteen years plus with the company got the better schedules like five trips to Hawaii during the month. I longed for that kind of route.

Newbies like us had little seniority and usually flew reserve. That meant nine days off during the month with the rest of the time being on twenty-four-hour call. At a moments notice, scheduling could assign us a trip with a one-hour notice. Usually, we filled in for absent employees or those delayed elsewhere by mechanical difficulties on a previous flight. We had to keep a packed suitcase ready, like an expectant mother.

Despite the unusual hours, the waiting by the phone, the meal service on back-to-back commuter flights, and the rigors of standing for up to fourteen hours at a time, the job was a lot of fun.

I'll always remember those days as some of the best of my life.