May 15th marks the 94th anniversary of the first commercial air flight with a female cabin attendant, originally called, “Sky Girls”. Today’s cabin attendants work hard but read on to learn what their duties were when they first took flight
(Female) Flight Attendants.
Ellen Church, Boeing Air Transport, 1930, San Francisco, CA.
Women did not take to the “friendly skies” until four years after commercial aviation began in the U.S. in 1926. The first flight attendant was a German gentleman named Heinrich Kubis who began as a zeppelin (blimp) steward in 1912. Kubis worked solo in the beginning but made his way up to bigger and bigger airships, becoming part of the extensive crew for the Hindenburg, a state-of-the-art zeppelin carrying 72 passengers.
Kubis was aboard on May 6, 1937 when it crashed in flames. He was one of the crew who urged passengers to jump when the craft neared the ground and once they evacuated, he followed, surviving the disaster and living on until the 1970s.
Flight attendants on airplanes continued to be male, in the tradition of cabin stewards on passenger ships and rail attendants. Ellen Church, a 25 year-old registered nurse who was also a licensed pilot, became the first female flight attendant in 1930. She convinced Boeing Air Transport executives that women nurses were better trained to help overcome passengers’ fears of flying due to extremely bumpy rides. Most planes flew about 5,000 feet above ground, where the air is much thicker and often choppy.
B.A.T. told Ellen they liked her idea and that they were willing to try a three-month test and to go recruit seven more nurses. Despite the rigid requirements (5’4” or shorter, less than 115 lbs., 25 or younger), she assembled a team.
She made her first flight on May 15, a 13-stop, 20 hour, 1,858 mile journey from Oakland to Chicago. Though she and her “sky girls” were petite, they were determined to show themselves up to the varied chores which included serving passengers and calming their fears, handling baggage, screwing down loose seats, assisting in fueling the craft and finally, helping the pilots push the plane into the hangar!
The B.A.T. experiment was a huge success and soon other airlines were hiring their own “sky girls”. Despite the tough conditions and the dangers, women clamored to fly as the job paid $125 a month and there were few jobs for women during the Depression.
Ellen’s “sky girl” career came to an abrupt halt due to injuries she received in a car crash but she resumed flying in WW II, earning numerous medals for valor and becoming a Captain in the Army Nurses Corp. She specialized in aiding in the evacuation of wounded soldiers.
Tragically she died in a horse riding accident and today the airport in her hometown of Cresco, Iowa is named Ellen Church field. B.A.T. later became United Airlines. And in 1971, men once again joined the cabin attendant profession.