“Fly Girl” by Ann Hood

Save for performing artists, perhaps no other profession is shrouded in such mystique, glamour, and hush-hush rumour as that of a flight attendant. True, that sparkling aura has dimmed somewhat over the past decades. The rise of low-cost airlines, an increase in average income and other factors have changed the scene of flying. From something exclusive, flying has evolved into a mundane activity. And for many people, for whom airfare used to be an unattainable luxury, it has turned into a part of life.

What charmed me in Ann Hood’s memoir ‘Fly Girl’ was the way the author has managed to recreate the atmosphere of those times when flying made anyone involved, be it a passenger or a flight attendant, special. I have my own cherished memories of that golden era. Even though we didn’t have chateaubriand served to us in first class – on Antonov-24 and Tupolev-134 there wasn’t first class at all – it didn’t make flying less magical. More than four decades have passed since then, but the memories of those first flights haven’t dulled one iota.

I could so well relate to the sentiments the author expressed about her heart still leaping with excitement upon seeing the familiar building of a terminal or stepping into a plane. I haven’t flown as many miles as she has, of course, but I fly regularly and at one stage of my life I even flew quite frequently. And every time, my heart flutters at the sight of Riga Airport, which I watched grow and become more modern and beautiful. It is the same with Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, Norway, which I flew into for the first time a short while after its opening and kept returning there often, sometimes twice a year. It used to be like this with Heathrow Airport in London, when twenty years ago I flew there every few months for several years.

The author made me feel what she felt when walking through the terminals wearing her elegant flight attendant uniform. She made me see the world of flying through her eyes, and for that, I am grateful. I was there beside her while she spent long hours on her feet, taking care of hundreds of passengers, being a waitress, a hostess, a live promo for the airline, a psychologist and even a medic providing first aid. And sometimes, she had to step into the intimate shoes of a close friend, someone whom a grieving passenger desperately needed but predictably could not reach thousands of miles above the ground. I smiled and nodded knowingly, reading about the angry words the passengers threw at flight attendants when something couldn’t be done as they wished. ‘I’ll never fly TWA again!’ How often did I hear these same words, but with the name of a bank I used to work for many years ago. And how similar the code of conduct was for us, client service specialists. Placate the client, offer them a free ‘candy’ and, fingers crossed, they’ll calm down and reconsider leaving.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this memoir. The only minor issues I had with the book were a somewhat jumbled beginning, where the author introduced the history and the struggles of the flight attendant profession, and the remarks about her mother’s character and actions in certain situations, which I found a bit unsettling. Both things stem from my strictly subjective perception, and other readers might see them from a completely different perspective.