People left speechless after discovering flight attendant job requirements in resurfaced listing from 1940s
People have been left stunned after discovering a list of flight attendant requirements in a job advert from the 1940s.
The vintage flyer from Transcontinental & Western Air Inc (TWA) details some rather outlandish requirements for its ideal air hostess in an advert posted some 80 years ago at the end of World War Two.
The ad has resurfaced in a Reddit post and has left people shocked by its 'gross' and 'absurd' list of criteria which doesn't focus on the typical qualifications that you'd see in a job post today, but rather on the physical appearance of the applicant instead.
At the top of the requirements is the preferred age for the cabin crew, in a narrow bracket of 21 to 26 years old, followed by height.
Advert
Successful applicants couldn't be shorter than 5'2 but no taller than 5'6 to qualify, for reasons that aren't explained in the ad but could be because passengers sit at 'hip height', as one person pointed out in the thread.
The airline also shockingly stipulated the applicant must weigh at least 100 pounds, but not exceed 130 pounds.
There was at least one qualification prerequisite - to have completed either one year of college or be a registered nurse.
But the bizarre list doesn't just end there as it also stated wannabe cabin crew 'must be single and have good vision.'
Reacting to the flyer in r/OldSchoolRidiculous, Redditors have been left appalled by the airline's stringent requirements.
"Were they looking for absurdly small women or is this one of those people used to be smaller on average sorta things?" wrote one. "Pretty gross still, just, a 100lb ADULT woman?!?"
A second pointed out how the advert required just one year of college and queried if that meant TWA was looking for drop-outs.
"Getting hired as a flight attendant was considered an excellent reason to drop out of college back in the day, for someone who’d prefer to travel and earn a modest salary rather than pay tuition and study," a third explained.
Another revealed her mom was hired as a hostess by TWA, despite not being a registered nurse and her lack of college education, but was promptly fired when she got married.
"Hostesses were routinely terminated upon marriage, or upon reaching the age of 32. TWA even stated bluntly, 'If you haven’t found anyone by that age, we don’t want you either'," the Redditor said.
Unsurprisingly, keeping her weight down to meet the arbitrary figure set by the airline also became a struggle, as the woman said her mom 'lived on black coffee, skim milk and four packs of cigarettes a day' when she worked as a TWA and was 'subjected to random weigh-ins'.
The former employee was reportedly suspended 'briefly but traumatically' by the airline a few times 'for weight gains as trivial as three pounds,' the Redditor added.
Despite this, she applied 'several times' in the late 1970s herself and came to discover many of these outdated requirements, like rules for a 'symmetrical figure', still existed.
"Flight attendants with very large breasts, in the days when augmentation was rare and dangerous, were sometimes hired, but they also were subject to disproportionate harassment during years when sexual pestering was expected by all female employees everywhere," she added.
The Redditor said she was 'relieved not to have been offered a job.'
A second chimed in agreement: "My mom was a TWA stewardess in the 70s. The requirements weren’t much different."
TWA was an airline that operated in the USA from 1930 until 2001, when it was acquired by American Airlines which fortunately doesn't favor age, height, weight and relationship status for its cabin crew today.
Liv Bridge