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"Queen of Aloha" retires after 50 years of Aloha
Really nice AP story on Patti Smart, a flight attendant for Aloha Airlines, who will retire tomorrow after 50 years on the job.
Way to go, Patti!
The entire article can be found here.
Way to go, Patti!
Flight attendant retires after 50 years
By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press Writer
Thu Nov 29, 11:34 AM ET
HONOLULU - When Patti Smart was hired as an Aloha Airlines stewardess 50 years ago, it was a different job for a different time.
She rubbed elbows with Frank Sinatra, performed in-flight fashion shows and danced in smoke-filled aisles aboard cramped DC-3s seating two dozen passengers.
Smart, nicknamed the "Queen of Aloha," retires Friday after more than a half-century on the job she started when she was 18 years old.
A lot has changed since the old days, when people dressed up in hats and bow ties to fly on propeller-powered planes across the Pacific.
"You're supposed to have the same niceness, the same warmth, the same caring. But it's faster now," Smart said. "In the older days, the flights were longer so you had more time to be intimate with passengers and you got to be very good friends with them."
Smart has the third most years in the sky among the 55,000 flight attendants represented by the Association of Flight Attendants. The most senior flight attendant in the nation started her job in 1950.
Smart was paid $170 per month for 85 hours of work after she was hired on Jan. 28, 1957.
Today, as the airline's most senior flight attendant (they're not called stewardesses anymore), she makes $43.50 per hour catering to first-class passengers on flights between Orange County, Calif., and Honolulu.
By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press Writer
Thu Nov 29, 11:34 AM ET
HONOLULU - When Patti Smart was hired as an Aloha Airlines stewardess 50 years ago, it was a different job for a different time.
She rubbed elbows with Frank Sinatra, performed in-flight fashion shows and danced in smoke-filled aisles aboard cramped DC-3s seating two dozen passengers.
Smart, nicknamed the "Queen of Aloha," retires Friday after more than a half-century on the job she started when she was 18 years old.
A lot has changed since the old days, when people dressed up in hats and bow ties to fly on propeller-powered planes across the Pacific.
"You're supposed to have the same niceness, the same warmth, the same caring. But it's faster now," Smart said. "In the older days, the flights were longer so you had more time to be intimate with passengers and you got to be very good friends with them."
Smart has the third most years in the sky among the 55,000 flight attendants represented by the Association of Flight Attendants. The most senior flight attendant in the nation started her job in 1950.
Smart was paid $170 per month for 85 hours of work after she was hired on Jan. 28, 1957.
Today, as the airline's most senior flight attendant (they're not called stewardesses anymore), she makes $43.50 per hour catering to first-class passengers on flights between Orange County, Calif., and Honolulu.
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