Air hostesses share fascinating insight into their lives on board American airline Pan Am

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The fascinating lives of air hostesses who worked on board American airline Pan Am have been laid bare in a revealing new book.

From bras full of scrambled eggs and pilots being spiked with laxatives to celebrity passengers, there’s more to the so-called ‘golden age’ of air travel than you might expect.

Pan Am employees share their first-hand experiences in Food and Aviation in the Twentieth Century: The Pan American Ideal, by Dr Bryce Evans, Associate Professor in History at Liverpool Hope University.

As part of his research for the book, Dr Evans visited Miami, Florida, once home of Pan Am’s HQ, in 2018, where he spoke with former stewards – who served him a typical Pan Am ‘in-flight’ meal during their chat. 

‘During the course of our conservations we spoke about everything from sex and partying to drugs smuggling, describing how marijuana was often hid in the ribbon of a stewardess’ hat,’ he said.

Here Dr Evans charts some of the stand-out tales, while also revealing other key moments in Pan Am’s history.

Celebrity passengers  

While not all famous faces were well behaved, others were class acts. Former stewardess Donna Valdes told Dr Evans how the Oscar-winning American-Bahamian actor Sidney Poitier, now 93, turned into a relationship saviour mid-flight.

‘Sidney Poitier asked her why she looked so glum,’ Dr Evans said. ‘She explained that she had had an argument with her boyfriend, who happened to be the purser aboard the flight. 

‘Poitier stopped eating, placed his plate to one side and rose from his seat, calling over the purser and performing some impromptu relationship counselling to them both. 

‘Many stewards also aver that the worst behaved and most entitled passengers were not in fact celebrities or VIPs but travel agents.’ 

Fine dining  

Dr Evans said a huge part of Pan Am’s appeal was its proud, professional flight attendants and the food they served to passengers. 

‘At one point in the late 1950s even economy passengers could expect dishes such as stuffed guinea hen served on a plate with entrees and finished with a garnish of parsley. In first class you could expect caviar and eggs cooked to order.

‘Meanwhile the President Special menu of the 1970s offered a main of sole meunière in a rich brown butter sauce with parsley and lemon, hen marinated in Madeira sauce and steak drenched in butter.’

As Dr Evans points out, it’s a far cry from some of the fayre served-up on planes these days.

Speaking about his conversation with former stewards, he explained: ‘When I met some of these women, now in their seventies and eighties, they were kind enough to recreate a Pan Am dinner for me, in their uniforms.

‘I went to a quiet suburban home that was set up to be a plane. There were some real Louis Theroux vibes to the experience! I was received at the door by a stewardess who gave me a ticket, and then I was seated in the “Departures Lounge” – ie, the settee. And when we were ready to “board the plane” we took our seats at the table.

‘All the bone china crockery was beautifully designed and Pan Am authentic, with silver knives and forks, tablecloths and flowers. And the thing that stands out for me isn’t just the amazing Chateaubriand tenderloin of beef, it was the pride these women still had in their work.’

Helen Davey, a flight attendant between 1965 and 1986, revealed how cooking hundreds of eggs to order proved tricky during flights hit by turbulence.

She told Dr Evans: ‘Bouncing up and down, I was determined to cook those stupid eggs perfectly, against all odds. 

‘Somehow, my fellow flight attendants and I got into a “zone” and we managed, row after row, to deliver beautiful, fluffy scrambled eggs and sausages. 

‘Each dish was topped off by one bright green sprig of parsley, otherwise known as “Pan Am roses”, because no meal was considered complete without it. 

‘My fellow flight attendants and I felt extremely gratified when several passengers made a special trip back to the galley to tell us that it was the most delicious meal they had ever had on an airplane! 

‘I must have been one sorry sight when I got off the airplane on that beautiful, bright and hot summer morning. 

‘I couldn’t cover myself up with my overcoat because it was too hot. Eggs encrusted my hair, my uniform, my shoes, and my purse. 

‘The feeling of satisfaction, however, is something I’ve never forgotten. 

‘My crew and I had found a way to bring order from chaos, and those eggs had not defeated me, even though a referee might call it a draw: when I arrived at my hotel room and undressed, I had scrambled eggs in my bra!’

Dishing out laxatives to ‘bullying’ pilots 

Dr Evans told how many former flight attendants recalled the dislike they felt towards pilots who viewed themselves as “Sky Gods” and who would complain and occasionally sulk if they did not get the food they had requested. 

‘One [steward] remembers being so upset with one notorious pilot’s persistent bullying attitude that she plotted different ways to give him his comeuppance,’ he said.

‘Eye drops were in plentiful supply at the time because when smoking was permitted on airplanes flight attendants would have to walk back and forth through a confined space full of thick smoke clouds, which made the eyes burn and made the eye drops a travel essential. 

‘Therefore, on one occasion, after suffering what she considered an unfair reprimand, she secretly added her eye drop mixture to the pilot’s coffee, which had a strong laxative effect.’

Pilots and co-pilots not eating the same meal is no myth

You might have heard apocryphal stories of pilots and co-pilots refusing to eat the same meal, to stop them both being stricken with food poisoning, and assumed it was a myth.

Yet Dr Evans says the importance of having the pilots eat different dishes is illustrated by a serious outbreak of food poisoning on board a Pan Am flight between Copenhagen and New York in 1970.

Former stewardess Joan Nell Bernstein revealed: ‘Everyone got sick from the shrimp cocktail. 

‘Everyone was vomiting uncontrollably – crew, passengers – the entire plane was plastered in sick and the toilets were an absolute mess.’

Dr Evans adds: ‘The plane was met at John F. Kennedy airport by an array of ambulances and fire engines. Thankfully, as per protocol, one of the pilots had not eaten the shrimp cocktail that day.’ 

Women hired for being ‘homely and pretty’ 

Despite the glitz and glamour, Pan Am’s attitude towards women was problematic to say the least, according to Dr Evans. 

Not only were they subject to regular weight checks, they were also hired and fired based on their appearance.

One document from the 1960s uncovered by Dr Evans revealed how applicants could be turned down for being plain, unattractive, divorced, ‘has child’, ‘cold, passive’, ‘too much eye make-up’, ‘dumpy – head too small for body’, ‘judo handshake’, while applicants were favoured for being ‘homely’, ‘lady-like’, ‘a pretty girl, pleasant’ or ‘friend of company executive’.

Dr Evans adds: ‘It’s the Janus-faced nature of Pan Am – on the one hand you had this “body beautiful” Golden Age, but on the other hand they were treating people like meat. 

‘When I mentioned this to them, none had an issue with the conditions and none felt oppressed. 

‘Yet very few lasted a year or more in the profession and many married wealthy passengers or pilots. It perhaps reflects the standards of the age and while I found it quite sad, none of them had a shred of regret that they didn’t have a longer career.’

Stewardesses hated being ‘sexualised’ 

After speaking with the former Pan Am employees, Dr Evans said they were all disappointed at how sexualised the image of the stewardess had become in popular culture. 

‘There was real frustration there, and they wanted to emphasise the professionalism of the job, and how it wasn’t about sexy girls in tight uniforms,’ he explained. 

‘In this respect Pan Am was a cut above. Some of the other airlines at the time had stewardesses in hot pants. But Pan Am never cheapened itself in that way. 

‘Instead, at Pan Am there were lengthy memos about how to correctly serve bread rolls with a fork and tongue. It was also illustrative of the type of passenger they used to carry. 

‘And the stewards were all glad that they received such a high degree of training – including in the provenance of different wines, how the wines complemented certain dishes, and the regions of the world they came from. 

‘It pre-echoed the world today when people are obsessed with the authentic and the local. Pan Am was doing this year’s before it became so trendy.’

The demise of Pan Am

In the end, Pan Am suffered an inglorious end – declaring bankruptcy in 1991. Dr Evans says that despite opening up global travel to the masses, it was a firm wedded to an elitist – and at times archaic – notion of food service and food servers.

The final nail in the coffin came in 1998 when Pan Am Flight 103 was exploded by terrorists above the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 243 passengers and 16 crew, as well as 11 people on the ground.

Yet nostalgia for the brand lives on. Dr Evans said: ‘Talking to staff some 30 year after Pan Am’s demise, I got the impression that many of them are still in shock. 

‘They question how this could have been allowed to happen, how an American institution could be allowed to die? 

‘But under the form of American capitalism that the company embodies, you live by the sword and you die by the sword. And by that stage the market had shifted to such an extent that they were just bloated and expensive. 

‘They tried not to compromise, they didn’t want to be “no frills”. But the model was just uneconomic by the time that it died.’

Food and Aviation in the Twentieth Century: The Pan American Ideal, by Dr Bryce Evans, is published by Bloomsbury and is released December 10. To find out more about studying History at Liverpool Hope University, visit https://www.hope.ac.uk/