Pan Am Unbuckled: A Very Plane Diary (14 page)

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Loving & Leaving New York

For me, living and commuting from Manhattan made it a much more interesting experience than living in Queens— where the majority of flight service lived, because it was easy for them to get to JFK. Even thought Queens was just a subway ride away from Manhattan, they were ‘bridge people’— NY colloquialism for those who do not live in Manhattan—and, I never thought they had as much fun.

Pan Am’s NY scheduling was notorious for trying to catch us when we were non-contactable and on our legal rest. If we answered a phone call and it turned out to be scheduling, good luck. They could talk us— or con us— into agreeing to work any trip. Although it was a service that Pan Am occasionally used for quick access, I never flew the helicopter commute from the top of the Pan Am building in mid town to JFK. But, I did make more than one fast dash on a Carey Bus to JFK to work a trip to Africa for 14 days, or Rome/Tehran, or Frankfurt/Beirut — because the trip sounded so wonderful. These were ‘very senior’ trips and when scheduling offered me a chance to fly one, I grabbed the opportunity— even when I was on a legal rest, or not obligated to go.

To me, the whole reason for having this job—which I didn’t expect to last for me for as many years as it did—was to travel to every place I could. And so, NY was THE base to be at, if I wanted to go to places Pan Am flew system-wide.

Additionally, living in NY gave us work opportunities on our time off—that few other places in the world offered. A temporary agency called ‘Flight 485’ located at 485 Madison, specialized in using flight attendants on their time off. It could be office work, hospitality at a convention, or an advertising campaign for a product or anything their clients needed. Chances were that a flight attendant –especially a Pan Am flight attendant— would have a pleasing appearance and a level of confidence working with the public that was particularly needed for these temporary jobs. The most interesting temporary job I got out of that situation was being a production assistant (gopher) on the TV soap opera
Dark Shadows
. I worked for them many times— including the time I was responsible for getting the replacement vampire fangs for the character
Barnaby
.

NY was Pan Am’s biggest base. The City offered a chance to live a more anonymous life—but that was also its downfall as it could be very impersonal and lonely. So, as much as I LOVED New York, when the opportunity came to be based in San Francisco, I grabbed the chance to transfer and live on the West Coast with its ‘laid-back’ life style.

San Francisco Base

My second base was San Francisco. In a prior corporate organization model, SF had been the head of Pan Am’s Pacific division. By 1970 when I arrived, it was definitely headquarters for Pan Am’s Pacific flying, and the contractual sub-leasing to the military for the war effort in Vietnam. We flew the whole Pacific Rim and into the Far East— as far as Bangkok—and provided transportation for the Vietnam military R&R’s.

San Francisco was a magical city to work and live in. The climate, the people, the physical setting—everything about SF was beautiful to me. I lived on Russian Hill and Marin at different times, commuting to San Francisco Airport (SFO). The SF base was enough smaller than NY to make it feel ‘like family’. It was a smaller group of flight service, so I got to know people and I didn’t have a chance to feel isolated—like in NY. Everyone knew each other. If you wanted, you could bid to fly with the same people more frequently. It was the perfect balance for not being ‘stuck with the same crews’ all the time, and still be able to fly with the people we liked and to see them down line more often.

The trips were certainly interesting and exotic. Hong Kong, Bangkok, Tokyo, Jakarta, Tahiti, Pago Pago—what not to love? There was always interesting sightseeing, shopping, or BOTH at these destinations. The temptation to spend money in Hong Kong was so great, that I was actually grateful when family or friends asked me to buy something—because I could have the fun of buying things in Hong Kong without spending my own money.

As was true at other bases, Pan Am had a huge commuter contingency. Pilots and flight service commuted into SFO a little bit easier than some other bases, because, as a rule, our trip patterns were longer and therefore, we left home base less frequently.

I commuted for two years in the late 1970’s from Dorset, VT. Here’s how I did it: I bid a 5-day trip to Central America with a long layover in Guatemala— so that when I got back to SF home base, I was pretty rested; then I would waiver extra home base rest time to go out on a Tokyo turnaround; by the time I had done those two patterns, I had been away for about 10-11 days and would have flown the minimum number of hours for me to get legal time off for the rest of the month.

When I arrived in SFO from the leg back in from Tokyo, I would make a mad dash to the employee parking lot, next to the Pan Am hangar, leave all my uniform gear in the back seat of my Opel, quickly put on civilian clothes, and make it back into the main terminal in enough time to board as a ‘non rev’ (non revenue) on the same aircraft continuing to NY. There were ALWAYS seats available—because, as an exclusively international carrier, Pan Am was not allowed to sell tickets for the domestic leg between SF and NY.

At JFK, I had to wrangle a free seat on Allegheny Airlines to Albany, NY—where I would either catch another commuter flight to Rutland, VT, or Doug would meet me in a car. The drive from Albany to Vermont could easily be 3 hours if there was snow. The best part of this arrangement was that I could have as long as 5-6 weeks off in Vermont—before doing the reverse commute back.

In order for Pan Am to provide some of the R&R trips, the flights actually took off from Travis Air force Base in Fairfield, California. For the pilots and flight service to get to Travis AFB, we boarded the “Blue Bird” (which held about 20 passengers) at SFO and rode the two-hour commute— without air conditioning. It didn’t make it a terribly hard duty day, but adding on a two-hour commute before we even started our work day wasn’t particularly pleasant.

The pilots disliked it more than flight service crew. R&R flights were a straightforward and easy food service. The Air Force set the menus and there was no cocktail beverage service. But the pilot’s job was still exactly the same—no matter who the passengers were.

The mechanics at SFO were the nicest men I ever encountered. After our long flight patterns, invariably someone would not be able to start their car in the employee parking lot. For some reason, this always happened in the wee hours of the morning—in fog or rain-and there we were stuck with a car that wouldn’t start. But, all we had to do was walk into the hangar and tell a Pan Am mechanic “I’m having trouble with my car” and the next thing you know, they are in the parking lot with an aircraft jumper truck, revving us up and getting us on our way. They mothered and pampered us —and there seemed to be a lot less hoot-calling than we experienced at other bases (think Miami at the training school).

A lot of pilots lived in Nevada to avoid California State income tax. They parked camper trucks at SFO, that they shared with other pilots—so that they would have a place to crash between flights.

London Base

I was in the original ‘flight service base’ at London (LHR). To entice us to transfer to London, Pan Am promised us that we could transfer back to our original home base after 6 months, if we chose. And, as additional enticement, they offered each of us 2000-pounds of free shipping allowance—for our household goods. I grabbed the opportunity to go. I thought it was a wonderful chance to live abroad again. The whole of my free-shipping allowance was used to ship my Opel GT.

The flight service personnel transferring from San Francisco to London was the first Pan Am group to go through the United Kingdom’s immigration system— and Heathrow Airport’s immigration office wasn’t quite ready for us. We had all the proper documentation, and the Pan Am station manager was already involved. However, the women in the group were stopped and held, because we were declaring ourselves as ‘head of a household’ and British law made no allowances for other than men to be a ‘head of a household’. I remember being so jet-lagged and tired— and having to wait and wait while they figured this out. We were literally being told that we couldn’t enter the country. And if we did, we definitely wouldn’t be allowed to work. This was truly Pan Am’s ‘headache’ and not ours to fix. It did ultimately get corrected. But I remember feeling very ostracized and discriminated against—just because I was a female. I was a young woman and young women weren’t treated equally at that time in England.

Many of the flight service crew chose to live in the English countryside— in one of the numerous small villages of Buckinghamshire or Oxfordshire — both were just a commuter train ride away from London. It was the best of both worlds. We could have the comfort of living in a village, but also get to London and make it back on the last train— after an evening play or concert. When England built their trains in the 1800’s, people saw them as a chance to get in to see the London operas, so they were called the ‘Opera Trains’.

The London base was a lot of fun in those early days, particularly because it was composed of flight service originating from all the other bases. Flying schedules were not very predictable in the early days of the base. Scheduling personnel treated us more as a group of reserves—for flights coming in that were short of crew for whatever reason. So, we had a large percentage of ‘on call’ assignments month-after-month. The thing that was bad about that arrangement, was that our guaranteed time off was shorter— and the rest of the time was not really our own. Flight service could assign us a pattern coming out of New York, Los Angeles or Miami at any moment.

One very interesting and fairly unique type of flying that the London base did, was for the Inter German Service (IGS). Until the Berlin wall came down, Pan Am had an internal German airline, which included flights between Hamburg, Frankfurt and Berlin. IGS used 727’s for the short-hauls, and we could legally operate them with as few as three cabin crew. The London base used us to augment IGS service as needed. It was a little bit of a problem for me, as I looked very German to our German passengers, but didn’t speak a word of it. Inevitably, passengers would get confused and upset that I was not the German speaking stewardess that they expected. The pilots loved the IGS, because, at one point, they actually had a Pan Am base in Berlin— and the pilots there were a very close-knit group.

England was still struggling with their postwar economy, so living and working on an American salary made our lives so much easier than that experienced by the normal Briton, and it made us seem very well off in comparison. Owning any car, what’s more a sports car like my Opel GT, was considered a great luxury at that time.

Once, I got called for a trip at the very last minute. They were really desperate for me to get to Heathrow as quickly as I could, as they needed a purser. I jumped in my car in Bourne End Village, where I lived, and tore down the M4— exceeding all speed limits while driving on the ‘wrong side’. Queen’s Terminal was a fairly unused terminal opposite Terminal 2—which is where the flight service office was located. I decided to park my Opel right next to the wall of the Queen’s Terminal, before the guard gate that led onto the tarmac—just so that I could rush in and let scheduling know that I had made it there. I fully intended to go back and park the car in the employee parking lot. But, instead, I ended up being ordered to report straight to the aircraft.

I had left my car right in the middle of a main entrance between two terminals. It had a German license plate on the front and a California license plate on the back—which may be the reason why it was left alone. It is hard to imagine these days, but when I came back, about ten days later, my car was still parked exactly where I had left it. No one had touched it. No one had moved it. As far as I could tell no one had looked into it to check for a bomb or anything. The car was ‘obviously so exotic’ that everyone probably thought it should be right where it was— and they left it alone.

The flight service supervisors in London were British and were the most meticulous, most detail oriented women I have ever encountered. They didn’t just care about our weight, or the condition of our uniform, or that we had both of our white gloves. They scrutinized our make-up, our hair length, our jewelry— and everything they could think of. It’s as if we were reporting for duty to the Queen! We absolutely had to be prim and proper or we were taken off the flight.

‘Weigh-ins’ were always onerous. Before report and briefing, supervisors, at will, could require us to stand on the scales. And, if our weight was over the maximum allowable for our height—we were off the trip. We could be put on ‘weight-check’, and taken off the payroll and ineligible for any flights until our weight was at-or-under what was allowed according to their charts. (The charts were from insurance company actuaries and based on women’s height. It did not take into account her age or body structure. And FOR YEARS, unbeknownst to those of us who were victims of this system, Pan Am had conveniently marked out the asterisk and footnote to the chart—which stated that the weights were based on women’s heights wearing 2-inch heels!) This policy applied exclusively to all female flight attendants. Male stewards and pursers were exempt.

I made some of my dearest, life-long friends while based in London. We really did become a part of the Bourne End Village life. We had a routine for going to the pub and spent many hours riding around the country side in my Opel or an old Morris Minor. Our cottage may have had rising damp with rats in the thatched roof, but it was a very special kind-of bonding we experienced as young women living independently in Europe.