Plane Queer

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Phil Tiemeyer. Plane Queer

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Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the

History of Male Flight Attendants

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All told, stewardesses actually cost the airlines more on average than stewards. Rickenbacker bemoaned how his company, when it had hired stewardesses before 1934, had spent one thousand dollars training each employee, only to have them quickly get married and leave.40 Of course, he could have undone this problem by allowing married stewardesses to continue working, like his all-male pilot corps and even his stewards. But such thinking was seemingly beyond him and all other airline executives in the 1930s. Instead, Eastern embraced a male-privileged orthodoxy: “When a flight-steward marries he is more valuable to the company because his stability increases, whereas the stewardess who marries gains a husband and loses her job.”41

Because Eastern had very little competition on its most lucrative routes, Rickenbacker did not need to give his straight male customers (much less his pilots) the costly amenity of attractive stewardesses. Eastern competed with companies like American and Delta within the triangle connecting Chicago, New York, and Atlanta. However, its most lucrative route—the busy vacation and convention corridor between New York and Miami—remained an Eastern monopoly.42 Thus there was no pressing economic rationale for Rickenbacker to raise his costs by hiring stewardesses without the hope of increasing his revenue. The other major airline to hire men, Pan Am, similarly faced little competition before World War II. The airline’s primary destinations in the 1930s were in the Caribbean and South America, with the China route opening in late 1936. After having been awarded every contract with the U.S. Postal Service to carry mail to its destination countries, Pan Am was guaranteed to be the only U.S. airline that could make money on these routes. Meanwhile, competition from South American airlines was largely thwarted by Pan Am’s aggressive monopolistic practices.43

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