The first flight attendants were required to be registered nurses.
On May 15, 1930, Ellen Church boarded a Boeing 80A trimotor on a United Airlines flight from Oakland to Chicago, becoming the first female flight attendant in commercial aviation history.1 Church, a registered nurse and licensed pilot, had proposed the idea to Boeing Air Transport after being told women would not be hired as pilots. She argued that having nurses on board would calm nervous passengers.
Boeing hired eight nurses for the original group, all of whom had to be single, younger than twenty-five, weigh no more than 115 pounds, and stand no taller than five feet four inches.2
The job was grueling. Early flight attendants loaded luggage, helped fuel the aircraft, and pushed planes into hangars after landing. In flight, they served meals, calmed passengers during turbulence, and provided medical attention when needed. They were called "stewardesses," a term borrowed from ocean liners.
Airlines maintained strict appearance and marital requirements for decades. Most carriers required stewardesses to resign upon marriage or reaching a certain age, typically thirty-two or thirty-five.3
The civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s challenged these restrictions. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 prohibited sex discrimination in employment. The age and marriage requirements were struck down through a series of legal challenges and EEOC rulings in the 1960s and 1970s.3
The gender-neutral term "flight attendant" replaced "stewardess" and "steward" in the 1970s and 1980s. Male flight attendants had been employed by some airlines since the 1940s but remained rare until anti-discrimination regulations opened the profession. As of 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported approximately 128,000 flight attendants working in the United States.