Not just a trolley dolly: the demanding life of an air hostess

Come Fly the World is not the book I thought I was getting. The slightly (surely deliberately) pulpy cover — a glamazonian stewardess, her mirrored cat-eye sunglasses reflecting a runway — promised a Mad Men-era history of silver service and highballs at 30,000 feet, glamour, frocks and sexual shenanigans.

Admittedly, deprived of the quixotic delights of a Ryanair snack pack shared with a fractious toddler on a delayed 5 a.m. flight to Alicante at the moment, I ignored the subtitle: ‘The Women of Pan Am at War and Peace.’ That sets the tone more accurately. This is a fairly serious-minded social and geopolitical history of Pan Am, 1966-1975, which takes in the Vietnam war, African independence struggles and the civil rights movement, plus huge upheavals in sexual politics. It’s an undeniably juicy period of societal change and questioning, and the author Julia Cooke uses individual stewardesses’ experiences as the prism through which to examine it.

We follow three more or less regularly: Lynne wants a complete change from her male-dominated biology degree, Karen is constitutionally adventurous and the Norwegian Tori’s thwarted dream to become a diplomat leads her to another outlet for world travel. Two others, Hazel and Clare, feature occasionally. These ‘stews’ and their colleagues fly the world, maintaining fragrant, smiling professionalism in the face of global events: hijackings and armed insurrection, near misses and hair-raising evacuations. They are the faces of President Ford’s Operation Babylift, caring for hundreds of Vietnamese ‘orphans’ (some later revealed to be nothing of the sort).

On a personal level, Pan Am is a means to an end, and the end is freedom. Without labouring the point, Cooke is good on the way an industry with rigid, deep-rooted notions about female service, looks and behaviour became a ticket to unparalleled independence.