Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant [Hardcover]

Drew Whitelegg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2007

Get ready for takeoff. The life of the flight attendant, a.k.a., stewardess, was supposedly once one of glamour, exotic travel and sexual freedom, as recently depicted in such films as Catch Me If You Can and View From the Top. The nostalgia for the beautiful, carefree and ever helpful stewardess perhaps reveals a yearning for simpler times, but nonetheless does not square with the difficult, demanding and sometimes dangerous job of today's flight attendants. Based on interviews with over sixty flight attendants, both female and male labor leaders, and and drawing upon his observations while flying across the country and overseas, Drew Whitelegg reveals a much more complicated profession, one that in many ways is the quintessential job of the modern age where life moves at record speeds and all that is solid seems up in the air.

Containing lively portraits of flight attendants, both current and retired, this book is the first to show the intimate, illuminating, funny, and sometimes dangerous behind-the-scenes stories of daily life for the flight attendant. Going behind the curtain, Whitelegg ventures into first-class, coach, the cabin, and life on call for these men and women who spend week in and week out in foreign cities, sleeping in hotel rooms miles from home. Working the Skies also elucidates the contemporary work and labor issues that confront the modern worker: the demands of full-time work and parenthood; the downsizing of corporate America and the resulting labor lockouts; decreasing wages and hours worked; job insecurity; and the emotional toll of a high stress job. Given the events of 9/11, flight attendants now have an especially poignant set of stressful concerns to manage, both for their own safety as well as for those they serve, the passengers. Flight attendants, originally registered nurses charged with attending to passengers' medical needs, now find themselves wearing the hats of therapist, security guard and undercover agent. This last set of tasks pushing some, as Whitelegg shows, out of the business altogether.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Using interviews with more than 60 flight attendents, Whitelegg puts together a highly readable study of the perils and perks of working the friendly skies. Structured around the typical flight sequence-departure, safety checks, in-flight entertainment, cruising altitude, etc.-Whitelegg highlights the dangers involved (from accidents to terrorism) as well as minor nuisances (disrespectful passengers, coworkers) and those persistent gremlins, fatigue and disorientation. Whitelegg's interviews reveal anecdotes funny and dramatic, as well as thought-provoking points of contention like the disconnect between attendants' actual roles as safety officers and airline honchos' insistence they adopt the role of a friendly host. Even more interesting is Whitelegg's look at the sexist "Coffee, Tea or Me?" stewardess stereotype in light of the immense freedom flight attending now provides working mothers and other women: "There is no other female-dominated profession in which women spend so much time away from home." Whitelegg occasionally overreaches with unnecessary fabric-of-the-universe commentary ("Our lives are shaped by space at the same time that we, in turn, shape space"); his study of a singular profession flies ably on its own.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In his new history of flight attendants, Whitelegg, of the Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life, seeks to provide a balanced inquiry into the lives of these long-overlooked professionals. Through copious oral histories gathered in personal interviews, readers learn of difficulties at home caused by airline work schedules and of attendants' endless struggle for respect. Whitelegg may overly sympathize with his subjects, leading to exaggerated comparisons between the safety duties of the cabin and flight crews, and his crediting the flight attendants' union with instigating fundamental changes made to the FAA seems a far reach. There is no need to inflate the significance of his subject. The flight attendants speak well for themselves, sharing a wealth of interesting, entertaining, and dramatic anecdotes. Their personal stories and the window Whitelegg opens onto women's lives in aviation, combined with analysis of specific acts of courage in accidents and crises, including 9/11, and a straight-ahead history of the profession are rich enough to satisfy the most curious reader. Mondor, Colleen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press (June 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814794076
• ISBN-13: 978-0814794074
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,143,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Glimpse Into A Privileged Work Condition, April 26, 2008

By 

Cathy L. Wood (Honolulu, HI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant (Paperback)

Whitelegg has written an accessible account of the fight attendant profession for those in the airline industry, travelers, and academics. As a flight attendant for nearly 22 years now, I know how airlines manage workers through fear and intimidation. The fact that Drew Whitelegg does not work in the industry and was still able to solicit candid responses from interviewees alone is a great feat. My labor contract states that a flight attendant can be terminated for talking disparagingly about the airline! It is understandable that some respondents had to size him up to determine his true intensions and for whom he actually works.

Most accurate in his portrayal of flight attendants is the cost-benefit decisions made daily, which often hold "lifestyle" over wages and benefits. I continue in this profession because I love my lifestyle--my job is my identity. This, however, doesn't mean that I accept continuing discriminatory practices, labor and management conflicts, abuse from passengers, and harm caused by extreme cuts to labor, but flight attendants are left with little choice when labor unions, in many ways, have a history of complicity in the commodification of labor.

Many books about or even by flight attendants are anecdotal at best, and a sociological perspective long overdue. I suspect that those who choose not to read this book do so because they wish to keep flight attendants firmly as a retro icon of servitude, rather than acknowledge us as safety professionals. No one should feel disposable in their job, yet soon after 9/11 a pilot told me just that: "Put your body between a hijacker and the flight deck door--you are disposable."

I hope those who read this book look differently at your cabin crew the next time you fly. We are human and have the right to make a living just like anyone else whether we are aging, overweight, married, or have children. This book is a must read and I also recommend "Femininity in Fight" by Kathleen M. Barry.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an easy read, and I really enjoyed it, September 4, 2007

By 

Elevate Difference "Elevate Difference" (worldwide) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant (Paperback)

In Working the Skies, Drew Whitelegg takes the interviews and study of a multitude of flight attendants and creates a readable, enjoyable tale of the perils and possibilities flight attendants face. The book is part psychology, part history and part cultural study with plenty of personal tales from retired and active flight attendants. The majority of flight attendants are women, which places the job in a unique historical and social context.

Commercial flight became popular and accessible during the 1950s and 1960s. Originally, flight attendants were registered nurses to allay any health and safety concerns by fliers. It also became a respectable way for women to "escape" the house and have jobs.

As flight became safer in the 1960s, with pressurized cabins and other improvements, airlines began using the attraction and sex appeal of their flight attendants. The exotic destinations and glamour of air travel was celebrated. The author makes the case that there is currently nostalgia for this glamorous ideal of the flight attendant's world that is at odds with the demands and hazards of the job.

"Space-out" was an often-repeated phrase/concept used by the author. Flight attendants in the capacity of their job are able to create a separate world from their home world. This gives them a particular freedom of autonomy and self-expression not as available to other women, working or not. The excitement and freedom that the job allows flight attendants in the "space-out" is countered by the guilt that many flight attendants with children and those in a relationship. It's a complex issue combining cultural and social norms of what a woman should be for her children and partner with the affects of the job on the psyche along with the enjoyment of being able to "get away."

The airlines are painted as worried more about bottom-line then the lives and concerns of flight attendants: shorter layovers, less staff, a return to the "sexy" flight attendant imagery of the past that causes a "squeeze-in" where freedom becomes restricted. It's worth noting that most upper management staff are male, compared to the female-dominated flight attendant staff.

Working the Skies is an easy read, and I really enjoyed it. After reading this book, on my next flight I will be paying more attention and respect to the flight attendants I see.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The career might be fast-paced and disorienting, but the book isn't, February 16, 2010

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Avid Reader (Villa Park, IL) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant (Paperback)

If you're looking for anecdotes about the excitement of a flight attendant's day-to-day, this is not your book. If you're looking for a sociological study of the history of the position, that is what you will get.

It's rare that I have trouble finishing a book, but this book was the exception. I'm well familiar with academic literature, and this book reads like a dissertation... as I suspect it originally was. The author is trying to stretch his (obviously extensive) research into something interesting and readable, but the end result - the book - is as dray and colorless as the research. Too much is made of the concept of flight attendants as being "spaced out," a term the author coins (and then overuses) to describe their relative position vis-a-vis time and physical space. In other words, the job pays not only financially, but also by giving (predominantly) women a chance to carve out separate spheres of their lives.

Some of the historical background to the modern industry is fascinating, but it's bogged down by the unreadability of the reporting. Other facts are presented as novel, in what reads as almost an insult to the reader. (For instance, flight attendants have their own lingo! They talk of "picking up shifts" - whatever could that mean?) In an attempt to be thorough, the author has over-researched.

This book will be worthwhile for some readers, for certain, and definitely has a place in academia. However, the attempts to bill it as being of mass-market interest are perhaps too ambitious.