20 Bizarre Airline Rules From The Early Days Of Commercial Flying

Between the 1930s and 1960s, the big U.S. airlines would fire stewardesses immediately upon marriage, regardless of tenure or performance. This wasn’t required by law. It was just company policy. These airlines wanted a workforce of young, single women who could work any time, any place, without commitment.

In early planes like the Ford Tri-Motor, weight mattered. Agents placed passengers on a platform scale next to their luggage to determine fuel burn and balance. There was a free allowance of 30 to 40 pounds for checked bags. If you went over, the charges were heavy. You wouldn’t consider that offensive. You’d call it a law of nature.

The airlines that hired stewardesses between the 1930s and the 1950s required them to have 20/40 (or better) uncorrected vision. Glasses were completely banned inside the cabin. No safety rationale for the rule survives in company records; it appears to have existed mainly to preserve the youthful image airline executives wanted the cabin crew to project.

Because cabins weren’t pressurized until commercial jets arrived in the late 1950s, flights over mountainous terrain climbed as high as 10,000 to 14,000 feet, which meant that your ears could end up aching. Cabin crew would offer chewing gum as the plane ascended or descended, knowing that the act of chewing and swallowing could help balance the pressure within the middle ear.

American Airlines began retiring stewardesses at 32 in 1953. Another large carrier, TWA, established a retirement age of 35 in 1957. These weren’t federal rules. Both were policies designed to maintain a youthful image of the profession.

At those unpressurized cruising altitudes, the thin air caused hypoxia, a condition where a lack of oxygen makes people pass out. The crews had rubber oxygen tubes they would use to give oxygen to an afflicted passenger, and smelling salts for someone who fainted. That was standard equipment before pressurized cabins were commonplace.

The stewardess uniform manuals stipulated that a “girdle” must be worn beneath the uniform skirt. Supervisors checked uniforms to make sure they were being worn. There were also weight checks and uniform/grooming inspections. The policies didn’t just go into the workplace; they went directly into what women wore underneath their clothing.

The early metal and fabric cabins offered virtually no insulation, and the roar of the engines, over 100 decibels, high enough to cause hearing damage, was deafening. Flight attendants were instructed by the airlines to distribute cotton balls or earplugs right after boarding. Another small concession in aircraft that were basically flying repair shops.

For more than three decades, U.S. domestic airlines restricted cabin attendant positions to women only (although men sometimes worked as pursers on international flights). The prohibition was lifted in 1971 after a federal appeals court ruled against Pan Am in Diaz v. Pan American World Airways, applying Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. law prohibiting workplace discrimination.

The first wooden planes with fabric skins prohibited smoking due to the potential for fire. Later, as planes became metallic, smoking was prohibited only during taxi, takeoff, landing, and refueling. By the 1950s, passengers could light up freely once the plane reached cruising altitude.

Stewardesses had to follow height-to-weight charts that capped their weight, usually between 118 and 135 pounds. Before each flight, they were made to step on a scale to see if their weight was okay. If they gained even two or three pounds, they would be suspended without pay until they lost enough weight to meet the company’s specifications.

Until air piracy emerged as a problem in the ’60s, there were no locked doors in the cockpit. Captains used to call up kids in the cabin to take a look at the instruments, sending them back down with a souvenir wing pin as a keepsake.

The flight manuals said that the window shades had to be locked open during takeoff and landing. That way, you could see any smoke, fire, or structural damage outside, and everyone’s eyes would stay adjusted to the outside light in case a quick evacuation was needed. Little rules with big intentions.

Prior to the introduction of lighted airway beacons and radio navigation in the late 1920s, commercial aviation was prohibited from flying at night by both government regulations and the airlines themselves. Passengers wishing to travel at night had to disembark and complete their journey in a sleeping car.

Sometimes airlines would hire widows or divorced women as stewardesses, provided they were childless. That was another clause distinct from the policy of firing stewardesses upon marriage.

There was no official “wardrobe policy” for flying in the mid-century, but passengers were expected to dress formally. The conditions of carriage, the terms that passengers implicitly agreed to when they bought a plane ticket, allowed gate agents to deny passage to people who were deemed unclean or untidy.

A stewardess’s manual from the 1930s describes many tasks other than catering and service. She was expected to lug suitcases up the ladder of a boarding plane, sweep and mop the floor of the cabin, and assist in pushing the light trimotors into their hangar on dirt airfields. Glamour, it appears, required some mopping skills.

U.S. domestic flights in that era offered no alcohol, while Pan American’s transoceanic Clipper flying boats handed out liquor on lengthy ocean crossings throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Where you flew decided whether you drank.

On May 15, 1930, Boeing Air Transport hired its first female flight attendants, led by Ellen Church, a registered nurse and licensed pilot. She wasn’t hired to fly, however, but to serve as head stewardess. The airline mandated that all female flight attendants must be licensed nurses; this requirement became an industry standard until shortages of nurses during WWII prompted the industry to relax it.

Though there was never any written policy, U.S. airlines had a long-standing informal practice of not hiring nonwhite women as stewardesses. On February 11, 1958, a registered nurse named Ruth Carol Taylor worked her first flight for Mohawk Airlines and was the first Black flight attendant in U.S. commercial aviation. The industry wasn’t going to change overnight, but the crack had appeared.

This content was created with the help of AI.