I was hired as a Pan Am pilot in Jan 1966.
The Pan Am show is set in 1963 and it was of the same era, with the same uniforms and same dress and weight regulations. A few years later Pan Am designed new uniforms and allowed the flight attendants to wear either a brown or blue uniform.
Last night I recorded the show so I can see it later today without commercials. (Haven't seen it as of this writing)
I don't recall (then, stewardesses) being required to wear a girdle, as someone has mentioned. However, they were subject to periodic weight checks, and if they were deemed to be over weight they were given a time frame to lose the weight.
If they were pregnant and showing, they had to go off flight status until after giving birth.
Due to all the flights being international, Pan Am needed multilingual people so they hired many foreign national flight attendants. Many of the European flight attendants they hired spoke 3 and 4 languages.
The flight attendant job is a very serious one, and they have two primary duties:
- One is providing meal service. (Today that means Peanuts)
- The most important duty, that most people never get to see, is the duty to take charge of the cabin and issue necessary directives in the event of an emergency. They are highly trained in all emergencies, and perform those emergency duties to a high degree of proficiency, including putting their own lives at risk in order to save the lives of their passengers.
In Dec 1969, a Pan Am 707 airplane ran off the runway in Sydney, after a bird strike on take off. Due to the actions of the pilots and flight attendants, no one was injured. I ferried a plane there to take the place of the damaged aircraft, and then deadheaded home on that plane with the crew that was in the crash.
Super model Christy Turlington's mother was a Pan Am flight attendant on the flight that crashed, and she and I were seat mates while deadheading back to SFO. At the time she was pregnant with one of her daughters. There is some confusion about which daughter. Articles show Christy as being born earlier that year, but she was the middle child; and years later Liz told me that on this flight she was carrying the eldest daughter. I liked Liz and because both she and my wife are Hispanic I later invited Liz and her Pan Am pilot husband Duane to our home.
We all had different interests outside of Pan Am so we remained friends but didn't socialize much although we lived less than a mile apart. Duane and I became good friends at work and both became Training Captains in the training department, training other pilots.
He was very proud of Christy and when she moved to NY and joined the Eileen Ford agency, Duane would travel to NY between flights and help her buy a flat and provide guidance and support. Eileen Ford wanted to use Duane as the Captain in a photo shoot for another airline. He was a good choice, but since he was a Pan Am pilot he wasn't allowed to be photographed in another airline uniform. One year Christy bought Duane an airplane for a Xmas present. Unfortunately, Duane died a few years later of lung cancer.
EXCLUSIVE: An Interview With Christy Turlington Burns | WomenOnTheFence.com
In those early years 60/70's many movie stars and other celebrities flew on Pan Am. You could count on some celebrities being on almost every flight.
Marlon Brando was a frequent flyer to Tahiti with us, where he owned the
Tetiaroa island. If he was on board with us leaving Tahiti, we would fly near Tetiaroa and announce it (without using his name) so he could see the island. (Actually an Atoll) He was on my flight on a day when we arrived at HNL enroute to LAX. During the brief stop, the Pan Am Ops Manager came aboard and had to deliver the sad news to Brando that his good friend Red Buttons had died.
Any time Brando was on our flight, the flight attendants would say they were going to
"make him an offer he couldn't refuse".
During my career, I never heard of any pilots or flight attendants being involved in drug smuggling. Once I did hear that some ground personnel in Miami had some involvement.
During the 60's and 70's flying was very expensive. The pay was good and most flight attendants made a career of the job. People dressed up to fly, and almost everyone in first class wore suits. The service was excellent. The first class meal service was usually a 5-6 course meal with Chateaubriand carved at your seat by either a female Purser or a male Purser in white jacket. (
The Purser was the flight attendant in charge of the others) It was very classy. Dessert was Cherries Jubilee or Peach Melba.
Many of the young flight attendants were looking for husbands, as well as enjoying the adventure of world travel. So they jokingly developed the mantra:
MARRY ME AND FLY FREE. Some of those marriages did occur and just for that reason; so unfortunately, many of those marriages didn't last. It seems that the guys wanted to fly free, but have an "open marriage".
I'm interested in the show to see how authentic it is. Hopefully I won't be bothered by any material that isn't correct so I can enjoy the show as "entertainment".
However, it does bring back many fond memories of all my wonderful Pilot and Flight Attendant friends; the camaraderie we shared; and the esprit de corps we all shared for Pan Am. People all over the world have fond memories of Pan Am.
I guess if I were to sit down and do a recall I could write a book. I do have a lot of articles I wrote on my Active Rain Blog about some of my experiences with Pan Am, but I got very busy and had to curtail the writing.
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I've seen people get on planes wearing what I assume they clean ditches with...and flipflops that they kickoff and then stick bare feet in the aisle...deep sigh. It's amusing that the ladies had "weigh-ins" and couldn't be married...I knew a stewardess (and that term isn't even used anymore) 
Pan Am
