@TheAirPro
BLOG 5/3/2012
Welcome
to @TheAirPro
Up, Up, Up And Away, TWA!
After the initial disappointment of not having been accepted, feeling
dispirited by the defeat wasn’t me. When a new TWA ad came around again in the
Boston Globe, after a month, I sent my application once more. My hair had
grown. I examined myself and the mirror was exulting with enthusiasm back at
me.
Again I went through the same motions as last time, confident but
poised. But, this time, I was rewarded with the approval of the recruiting team!
Congratulations, you have been chosen!
Go home and pack for six weeks. Here is your airline ticket, one
way, Boston-Kansas City.
Welcome to TWA!
You must know that, in order to pass the first “hinder”, apart
from the length of my hair, I had to provide more personal information. Besides
my height of 5.2ft. which barely made it, my good looks scored higher. I wore
no glasses. I was single and I could swim.
Those were the hard conditions in those days to be hired as a TWA
stewardess. I remember that, in my class of twenty hopeful young women, one had
hid the fact that she was married.
But she wanted so much to fly that she agreed with the TWA’s
recruiting team and got divorced! (She re-married the same man later when TWA
deleted this particular rule)
Understand I had been accepted, yes, but not 100%!
There were six weeks of intense training to go through, at TWA‘s Flight
Academy and if all went well, I would end up on the podium on graduation day.
Each day during that period ended with a test and it was demanded
to pass each one…with the exception of four! There was a trainee like me who
failed more than the required and who didn’t make it to graduation. That was
the way then!
I studied hard. I didn’t party around the pool and I explained my
anti-social behaviour with the fact that I was a foreigner and English wasn’t
my mother tongue. So I had to study harder. However only I knew how important my
success meant for me. I had to prove I could concentrate and show my success
mostly to my family back in France whom I hadn’t seen in two years and who had
no knowledge of my whereabouts!
I would wait to tell them upon the day my TWA gold wings to be
pinned on the heart side of my uniform jacket.
Anyway, one of the tests I didn’t pass had nothing to do with
language. It was a simpler one.
Operating an airplane coffee machine in the galley was more challenging
to me and, in my enthusiasm to show how
efficient I was, I had pushed the wrong buttons!!
Finally, the last day of my training period came. I had made it.
The Graduation Ceremony would confirm it all, American way !
A group of “polished” young, beautiful women, with rosy cheeks and
humid eyes, coiffed carefully under a pillbox hat, wearing a tight light powder
blue skirt, bolero jacket and a white blouse tightly tucked under, marched elegantly
to the rhythm of the 5th.Dimension…
“
Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon
Balloon...
Up, up, and away... TWA…!
“
I was SO proud.
I had become a TWA International Airline Hostess… a part of the
flying family. (The appellation “stewardess” had been deleted).
JFK-I airport my base, my new home at Hangar 12.
Time to announce this to my parents, you think ?
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