How Flight Attendants Ate and Slept on 17-Hour Flights in the 1950s

How did flight attendants eat and sleep on 17-hour flights in the 1950s? The airliner was fitted out like a hotel: berths, a lounge, dressing rooms. Every one of them was for the passengers. This 1950s air travel documentary follows the women who worked those flights, and finds where they ate, changed and slept. In 1956, BOAC air hostess Faith Sisman made her 150th crossing of the Atlantic. On the radio she listed the job: a seven-course dinner, champagne, babies, and two words a passenger never thinks about: make beds. She served that dinner from a galley four foot by six. We follow the golden age of air travel across two oceans: BOAC's Boeing 377 Stratocruiser stopping at Shannon and Gander, Pan Am over the Pacific by way of Wake Island and Honolulu, Pan Am's hiring rules of the late 1950s, and its 1955 "Nisei" class. In everything we found, no berth was set aside for the stewardess. The answer is at the stops. Stewardess history and aviation history, 1930–1980, across America, Britain and Canada. Every fact is sourced below. CHAPTERS 00:00 1956: Faith Sisman's 150th crossing 01:06 Welcome aboard 01:26 Seventeen Hours 03:43 Four Foot by Six 05:37 Three in a Hundred 08:19 Where She Slept 09:45 The three answers 10:15 The number 10:49 When the jets came 11:56 Next flight SHARE YOUR MEMORY If you, or your mother, flew the Atlantic or the Pacific before the jets, which airport did you come down at, and what do you remember about the ground? Tell us in the comments. With your permission, Peggy may read your memory on a future episode (first name and airline only). REGULATION OR RIDICULOUS? Pan Am in the late 1950s: not married, nor ever married. What do you make of it? SOURCES ("the manifest") The Daily Telegraph, obituary of Faith Jenk (née Sisman), November 4, 2019 — https://pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-... PBS American Experience, "Fly With Me": Pan Am's hiring practices and the "Nisei" women — https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexpe... CNN Travel, "Pan Am Boeing 377: The luxury airplane with beds in overhead compartments," 2020 (Bronwen Roberts; John Luetich, Pan Am Museum Foundation) — https://krdo.com/entertainment/2020/1... Natasha Feiner, "Sean Connery and a Coca Cola: Alleviating Fatigue in the Air," On Balance, University of Exeter, 2017 — https://onbalance.exeter.ac.uk/2017/0... University of Miami Libraries, Pan Am exhibit "Welcome Aboard" — https://scholar.library.miami.edu/dig... Also: Boeing Images captions for the 377 Stratocruiser; Clare Museum (BOAC at Shannon); Flight, October 28, 1955, and Aviation Week, February 15, 1954, as cited in Wikipedia's "Boeing 377 Stratocruiser"; Pan American timetable, July 1, 1956; CNN Travel, "Cognac and cigars" (Anne Sweeney); R.G. Pelley, Gander terminal plan, c.1955; Uniting Aviation (ICAO), BOAC Comet 4, October 4, 1958; Publishers Weekly. IMAGE CREDITS Archive films courtesy Internet Archive: 6 1/2 Magic Hours (Pan Am, c.1958); Flying with Arthur Godfrey (1953); Air Transportation (1947); Letter From an Airline Pilot (early 1950s); The Airport (1948) Wake Island Airfield, 1950: Harry S. Truman Library & Museum (2013-340) Ingenium Archives, CAVM Photograph Collection, CAVM-05500 Photo: Gander Airport Historical Society Maps, diagrams and illustrations are ours; illustrations are labelled on screen, and diagrams are not to scale. #stewardess #goldenageofairtravel #aviationhistory