Aging Flight Attendants and a Changing America

Store this one away in your data bank of random trivia: flight attendants are getting older. Between 1980 and 2007, the median age of flight attendants jumped up 14 years--from 30 to 2004--according to a new study by two Texas A&M researchers.

Why? Civil rights laws made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of age, sex, or race, which meant the airline industry's historical predilection for hiring young, slim, attractive, unmarried ladies had to go by the wayside (there were actually weight and marital requirements back in the day). In subsequent years, which brought rounds of layoffs and hiring freezes, the youngest employees with the lowest seniority levels were often the first to get the boot.

It bears all the markers of bigger trends in the American workforce, albeit on an extreme scale (in the same time period, the median age of all U.S. workers rose six years). While the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of the flight attendant population diversified, inflation-adjusted median hourly wages dropped 26 percent. At the same time, that perennial glass ceiling crept into the equation; while female flight attendants used to make more than their male co-workers--who were probably less senior--they now make slightly less.

There's a cautionary tale here, too. As the economic crisis batters the airline industry harder than ever, its flight attendants are likely to get even older--along with its pilots, who aged six years, and its mechanics, who aged four. In fact, they might even get older at an increasing rate as workers postpone their retirement, putting an additional strain on the industry in the form of health care costs.

So I guess this means Ms. Britney Spears' futuristic imagining of tomorrow's flight attendants won't come to pass...?