Miss Ellen Church, a Registered Nurse from Iowa, was the first US AIR HOSTESS who in 15 May 1930 welcomed her first 11 passengers aboard a United Airlines tri-motor Boeing 80A at Oakland Airport, California, preparatory to the five-stage flight to Cheyenne, Wyo. Nurse Church, a private pilot herself, had written to the airline a month or two previously suggesting that suitably qualified young ladies like herself might be employed as cabin attendants. She was not only engaged, but given the task of selecting and training seven other girls for the same work.
Outside the USA the first air hostesses were recruited by Air France in 1931, and these were also the first to fly on international routes. Swissair followed suit in 1934, KLM a year later, and Lufthansa in 1938.
The first air hostess in UK was Miss Daphne Kearley, 19, who commenced flying duties on 16 May 1936 on a 16-seat Avro 642 airliner flying Air Dispatch’s ‘Dawn Express’ route from Croydon to Le Bourget. Qualifications for the £ 3-a-week post included the ability to cook, type, mix cocktails and speak French. Typing was necessary because business passengers would dictate letters in the air, which Daphne would have typed for them by them by the time the plane landed. Her cooking skills were less often in demand, because the snack meals served generally consisted of smoked salmon and caviar. Calming nervous passengers and fending off the over-amorous was also part of her routine. Daphne denied a press report that she had 299 airborne proposals in ten months, but conceded ‘it was amazing the number of men who wanted to marry me when they were flying high’. She remained Britain’s only pre-war air hostess. BOAC recruited their first stewardesses in 1943, calling for young ladies with poise and an educated voice. ‘Glamour girls,’ added the Corporation austerely, ‘are definitely not required’.
