(CNN) — In the summer of 1969, Sheila Nutt was one of only two black women in a crowded Philadelphia hotel, waiting to be interviewed for a coveted role as a flight attendant for Pan American World Airways.
Nutt was a 20-year-old college student living in Philadelphia. A few years earlier, she was first runner-up in the Philadelphia division of the Miss America pageant.
“I was the first African American to be selected as the first runner-up,” Nutt told CNN Travel today. “Although I was not chosen as the winner, I was very excited about the result.
“I felt like a pioneer.”
Between rounds, Nutt chatted with the other contestants about her life goals and expressed her dreams of becoming a model or actress. One of the women said the airlines were looking for flight attendants – the advent of the jet engine had enabled international travel and airlines were booming.
Nutt was intrigued by the idea of working as a flight attendant. It was a ticket out of Philadelphia and into her future.
“There was a possibility that if I became a flight attendant, I could be discovered on a plane,” Nutt says.
After the pageant ended, Nutt remembers eagerly flipping through the local Sunday paper with her best friend Sandy. They went to the job posting page and saw an ad from Pan Am.
The role was not open to everyone. Candidates had to have a college degree, speak a second language and be of a certain height and weight, and glasses were banned. But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination against job applicants on the basis of race, so applicants from all backgrounds were encouraged. The first wave of black flight attendants had started flying a few years earlier and Nutt and Sandy were eager to join them.
While waiting to be interviewed, Nutt flipped through the Pan Am brochures that lay on the coffee table in front of her. Clear images of Rome, Paris, Istanbul and Buenos Aires splash across the pages.
“I would only read about those places in history books,” Nutt says.
The thought of visiting these destinations was exciting.
“Oh my god, I really want this job,” Nutt recalls thinking.
Nutt no longer saw working as a flight attendant as a means to fulfill a bigger dream of acting or modeling — flying sounded like a dream job in itself.
“Traditionally, African Americans didn’t travel the world, we went from Philadelphia to Atlanta,” she says. “So the whole idea of seeing the world was exciting to me.”
The conversation went well. Nutt says she wasn’t thrown when the interviewer asked her to demonstrate her “walking.”
“Having been to beauty pageants, I knew I was walking around the room in a way that showed a level of grace and confidence,” Nutt says.
Two weeks later, Nutt received a telegram saying she was in. All that was left was to pass a medical exam and go to Pan Am training school.
“When I got the telegram, I ran upstairs to my bedroom, I opened it, and I screamed and screamed, and I said, ‘Oh my god!’ and my mother thought something bad had happened.”
Nutt recalls her parents initially expressing concern about her accepting the job.
“They started to appreciate and understand my desire to get out of Philadelphia and see the world. I wanted to see those places I’d read about. I wanted to use the language I studied for four years in high school,” Nut says.
Nutt’s friend Sandy was not hired by Pan Am, but ended up at United. The two women remained friends and soon exchanged stories about their adventures.
A new chapter
Nutt was delighted to receive this telegram confirming that she had been accepted by Pan Am. This may interest you : As Travel Continues, Insurance Claims Follow.
After her last semester of college, Nutt traveled to Miami in January 1970 for training. She doesn’t remember any nerves before training.
“When you’re 21, you have no fear,” Nutt says. “It was just excitement.”
Due to Pan Am’s domestic flight schedule in 1970, Nutt had to travel from Philadelphia to Miami via Puerto Rico. The long journey was her first introduction to what the next chapter of her life would look like.
“On that flight from Philadelphia to Puerto Rico, I told the flight attendants at Pan Am that I was going to a training school and they were just fantastic. They were so nice and they were so encouraging and told me all the great things I would have experienced.”
Nutt flew to Miami First Class on a Boeing 707. At the time, flight attendants cooked food for passengers in the air. While sitting in the lounge on board, Nutt overheard one of the crew members talking about how tired she was from eating steak on the job.
Nutt recalls listening in disbelief. How can anyone get tired of eating steak?
“My eyes are open,” she says. “And I was just really excited — I think that’s the operative word, excitement — and I was eager to know what the world had to offer me.”
The training in Miami lasted a month. Nutt was the only black woman in the class.
Nutt (center row, fourth from left) was the valedictorian of her Pan Am training class.
Growing up, Nutt often found herself in spaces where she was the only person of color.
“I developed the ability to switch code, the ability to embrace diversity, equality and inclusion and fairness early on in my life,” she explains. “I’ve learned to deal with the prejudice and the racism and the bullying and the disrespectful behavior that some people tried to force on me and overcome.”
Nutt became very close to many of her classmates, with whom she is still in touch.
“More than 50 years later, we are communicating, sharing our stories,” Nutt says. “I am very happy to have met these women. It was a very valuable learning experience for all of us, because many of my classmates had never seen an African American in real life.”
Nutt says the majority of students were “open, receptive and willing to incorporate diversity into their own personal and professional spheres of influence.” She did come face to face with prejudice and remembers an intern who had a harder time and then failed to get through their probation.
“I didn’t allow their problems to have any impact on my ability to be successful, my ability to find happiness and joy, and achieve my own goal,” Nutt says.
Nutt describes the training curriculum as “very intensive”. The new recruits learned about ‘food, language, care, wines – we became connoisseurs of which wines came from which area, which wines belonged to certain menus’.
But training wasn’t just about learning how to make travelers comfortable.
“Our main focus was the safety of our passengers,” explains Nutt. “So we had a very intensive safety training – of course we had to pass exams, take tests.”
Flying in the 1970s
Sheila Nutt still has her Pan Am uniform and bag. See the article : Flight Shutdown, Delay, & Travel Disruption: Summer Travel Nightmare.
Nutt graduated from Pan Am school as a valedictorian of her class and started flying out of Miami.
“I was one of the first to fly the Boeing 747, so that was my favorite plane — maybe you know it had over 400 people on it at a time. And it was one of the forefront of aviation history in the 1970s,” says Nut.
“The 747 was going to go to Italy, to Rome, which I really enjoyed because I loved the history of Rome. I loved being a tourist there, I loved eating and shopping in Rome.”
Nutt also enjoyed traveling to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, and stayed at the InterContinental Hotel. InterContinental was owned by Pan Am, so flight attendants were usually accommodated in the glamorous hotels during layovers.
On board, Nutt, who after working for Pan Am for six months became a purser and later a flight attendant manager, cooked delicious food for passengers served on china plates.
“In First Class, we cooked everything from scratch,” she says, recalling painstakingly perfecting roast beef to the passengers’ wishes.
Nutt enjoyed talking to travelers and says she was proud to be a black ambassador for Pan Am and for the US in general.
“We were America’s de facto ambassadors at the time. When people got on the plane, they saw that.”
Sheila Nutt, former flight attendant of Pan Am
“We were the actual ambassadors of America at the time. When people got on the plane, they saw that.”
Nutt and her fellow black flight attendants would sometimes be discriminated against by white passengers. Nutt recalls one particular interaction with a white passenger from South Africa, who was racially segregated under apartheid at the time.
“This particular passenger was disrespectful to me, so I ignored him and kept doing my job,” she says.
Nutt says other travelers were “stunned” by this man’s behavior.
“He went back to the galley and told the other flight attendants, or flight attendants, that he wanted to apologize, but he didn’t have the capacity to come to me to apologize. But I understood where he was coming from, I knew he had problems that weren’t my problems.”
Nutt also recalls that Black Pan Am flight attendants were given a special dispensation to fly to South Africa, with the honorary status of White.
“It was very emotional. It was a very eye-opening and educational experience to have the opportunity to go to South Africa during apartheid,” Nutt says.
Creating a community
In mid-air rests, Nutt and her fellow flight attendants chatted about their work and life. On the same subject : Three hacks to make the journey easier than you thought possible.
She describes her relationship with other Black Pan Am flight attendants as a “special camaraderie.”
“We shared stories, experiences, and encouragement,” Nutt says.
Pan Am’s height and weight restrictions were not limited to recruitment – flight attendants were required to maintain a certain appearance and were sometimes subjected to random weight checks. Nutt says such demands were tolerated by Pan Am’s crew because of the travel opportunities the job afforded them.
“We knew the limitations and were willing to put up with the limitations because we felt it was worth it,” she says.
“We were willing to play. I think we were willing participants.”
Put me on the record, it was a great life. I liked it. And when I didn’t like it anymore, I left.”
Sharing a legacy
Sheila Nutt is now focused on sharing the stories of fellow Black Pan Am flight attendants and is working on a podcast project.
Nutt switched from Pan Am in the 1980s. Before leaving, she enrolled in a Pan Am program that allowed flight attendants to study during the week and fly on the weekends. She received a PhD from Boston University, wrote a dissertation on flight attendants and occupational stress, and later studied for a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School.
When Nutt retired from flying, she began working in education, most recently serving as director of educational outreach programs at Harvard Medical School’s Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership before retiring in 2020.
Nutt has been married to her husband, who is from Ethopia, for nearly four decades. The couple lived in Addis Ababa for ten years.
“I loved being a flight attendant, I learned so much about the world and about myself traveling abroad,” Nutt says, looking back on her career today. “My respect for and appreciation for different cultures has contributed to the success of my marriage.”
Nutt says she also sees the impact of her years exploring the world on her children.
“They are bicultural and like to travel the world,” she says.
Nutt also still enjoys traveling but says she is in the fortunate position of not having anything left on her bucket list. When she left Pan Am, the only destination Nutt still hoped to visit was China, which was closed to international visitors for much of her tenure. Nutt fulfilled that dream when she got the chance to travel to Beijing with Harvard.
When Nutt flies today, she marvels at how different the travel experience is and how the flight attendant role has evolved.
“There used to be the image of glamor – that played a big part in air transport in the 60s and 70s and before,” she says. “Nowadays, it seems like it’s basically getting you from point A to point B and being able to handle an emergency.”
The onboard service, Nutt notes, has also changed significantly.
“It’s just very different, and we’re talking about long ago, times are changing,” she says.
Today, Nutt’s focus is on collecting and sharing the stories of her fellow Black Pan Am flight attendants, who call themselves the “Pan Am Blackbirds.”
“These stories of African-American men and women are an integral part of general aviation history, but American aviation history in particular,” Nutt says.
Nutt is currently putting together a podcast called “Pan Am Blackbirds” that will shed light on these stories. She hopes to create a lasting legacy.
“It’s the chance to hear our stories, in our words,” she says.
“I thought it was important that our stories were preserved, emphasized, respected and recognized.”
Top photo of Sheila Nutt by Philip Keith for CNN
How much did Pan Am stewardesses make?
Several websites place the average salary of flight attendants in 2011 between $40,000 and $50,000. Plane Loads: Aquarius remembers full planes on some routes, but she also remembers “lots of empty seats” so passengers could disperse. In 2011, empty seats are a rarity, thanks to the airlines’ constant rounds of capacity reductions.
What were the requirements to be a Pan Am flight attendant? Being a flight attendant in the 60s
- Women only.
- Age: 21-27.
- Height: 5’2â – 5’9â
- Weight: In proportion to height, but no more than 135 lbs.
- Education: High school.
- Vision: 20/40 or better without glasses.
- Work experience: 3 years of public contact experience.
- Must be unmarried. No children.
How much did a Pan Am flight attendant make?
A: The median pay for flight attendants is $48,500 per year. Entry level flight attendants can expect about $14-$15 per hour.
How much do air stewardesses make?
Flight Attendants earned an average salary of $59,050 in 2020. The highest-paid 25 percent made $71,550 that year, while the lowest-paid 25 percent made $43,080.
Who is the highest paid flight attendant?
| Average annual salary | Extra annual salary | |
|---|---|---|
| US Airlines | $43,460 | $2,825 |
| Delta Airlines | $40,236 | $6,400 |
| Southwest Airlines | $42,000 | $4,800 |
| United Airlines | $44,219 | $5,200 |
Who took over Pan Am?
After a bidding war, Delta Airlines bought most of Pan Am for $1.4 billion, and acquired its European routes, the Northeast Shuttle routes, 45 jets, the mini-hub in Frankfurt, Germany, and its flagship Pan Am Worldport terminal. at JFK International Airport.
Who has become Pan Am?
Who owns Pan Am brand?
Pan Am Corp.’s name and trademark blue globe, one of the world’s most recognized brands, was auctioned Thursday for $1,325 million to a Maryland investment group.
What happened to Pan Am airlines?
In an effort to quickly create a domestic system, Pan Am acquired Miami-based National Airlines in 1980.
What is a female flight attendant called?
Male flight attendants are called hosts while female flight attendants are called.
What is another word for flight attendant? On this page you will find 10 synonyms, antonyms, idioms and related words for flight attendant, such as: flight attendant, flight attendant, flight attendant, flight attendant, cabin attendant, purser, skycap, flight attendant, flight attendant and stew.
What are flight attendants called now?
Later, as more women took on the job, “stewardess” became a common term to describe cabin crew. And now we have the gender neutral ‘stewardesses’. Less flattering terms are also used to describe these hardworking workers.
What is the proper way to call a flight attendant?
What is a call button for a flight attendant? Each aircraft seat has a flight attendant call button, usually in the overhead console, near the reading light and individual air nozzle (if the aircraft has one). The flight attendant call button, as the name suggests, is a way of calling a flight attendant to your seat.
What are the ladies on the plane called?
A flight attendant, also known as a flight attendant or flight attendant/airstewardess, is a member of the crew onboard commercial flights, many business jets, and some government aircraft. Called joint cabin crew, flight attendants are primarily responsible for passenger safety and comfort.
How many black flight attendants are there?
The most common ethnicity among flight attendants is white, making up 59.9% of all flight attendants. In comparison, there are 15.6% of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity and 11.7% of Black or African American ethnicity.
Who was the first black flight attendant? Ruth Carol Taylor (born December 27, 1931) is the first African American flight attendant in the United States.
Are there black flight attendants?
16 as International Black Aviation Professionals Day. The resolution is also the latest project for Casey Grant, one of Delta’s first black flight attendants. For Grant, the honor and appearances this week at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport have been a long time coming.
How many flight attendants are there in a flight?
Aircraft with a maximum payload of 7,500 pounds or less and a capacity of 19 to 51 passengers require one flight attendant. For aircraft with a capacity of 50 to 101 passengers, such as a 69-seat ATR 72 turboprop, two flight attendants are required.
How many flight attendants are there in America?
There are currently more than 111,833 airline flight attendants in the United States.
