Fly Girl: A Memoir
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4.2 • 65 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An entertaining and fascinating memoir of “gifted storyteller” (People) Ann Hood’s adventurous years as a TWA flight attendant.
In 1978, in the tailwind of the golden age of air travel, flight attendants were the epitome of glamor and sophistication. Fresh out of college and hungry to experience the world—and maybe, one day, write about it—Ann Hood joined their ranks. After a grueling job search, Hood survived TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy and learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen, and stay calm no matter what the situation.
In the air, Hood found both the adventure she’d dreamt of and the unexpected realities of life on the job. She carved chateaubriand in the first-class cabin and dined in front of the pyramids in Cairo, fended off passengers’ advances and found romance on layovers in London and Lisbon, and walked more than a million miles in high heels. She flew through the start of deregulation, an oil crisis, massive furloughs, and a labor strike.
As the airline industry changed around her, Hood began to write—even drafting snatches of her first novel from the jump-seat. She reveals how the job empowered her, despite its roots in sexist standards. Packed with funny, moving, and shocking stories of life as a flight attendant, Fly Girl captures the nostalgia and magic of air travel at its height, and the thrill that remains with every takeoff.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The "demanding, sexist, exciting, glorious" golden age of air travel sets the spectacular stage for this sparkling account from former flight attendant and novelist Hood (Kitchen Yarns). Trained at Trans World Airlines' selective Breech Training Academy in 1978 at age 21, Hood's airline career began in the glitzy days of Ralph Lauren uniforms, high heels, and chateaubriand carving stations, and dramatically ended eight years later in a picket line, as the combined forces of deregulation, bankruptcies, and labor strikes sent the industry into a tailspin. Despite occasionally didactic forays into the history of air travel ("Qantas Airlines operated the world's first international passenger service in 1935 between Brisbane and Singapore"), Hood's companionable storytelling paired with her bold skewering an oft-glamorized world—riddled with surprise weight checks and aggressive male passengers—make for an enthralling account. Equally effective is her moving story of overcoming entrenched stereotypes—"glorified waitress, a sex kitten, an archaic symbol of women"—within the industry to become a writer, drafting stories late at night on long international flights "as passengers slept" and powering through jet lag in "hotel rooms in Zurich and Paris and Rome" to craft her first novel. From takeoff to landing, this entertains and inspires.
Customer Reviews
Just what I needed
A huge thank you to Ann Hood for sharing her flight attendant life with us. I will never take what our flight attendants or air crews do for us for granted.
Lots of great stories about Flight Attendants & their jobs!
As a recently retired flight attendant, with over 40 years with a major, international airline, I must say that so many references to life as a flight attendant brought back so many memories! But some things in the book were shocking . . talking about what her salary was at the beginning of her career, and what Eastern paid their new hires was shocking. When I was hired in 1977, my base salary as a reserve was $461 a month!! We never had money for restaurants on layovers or for sightseeing. If it wasn’t free, we just walked and wandered. And I would NEVER go off on my own in a new city, especially one out of the country!!
But as a career I had never planned on, it was exciting, adventurous, and I’d do it all again. Even though the starting pay today is pretty skimpy, stick with it, build up your seniority, and “Oh, The Places You Will Go!”