Skirting the Problem

      More Letters From Paradise
        Skirting the Problem

Sometimes a story is just too good not to be told again. Such is the case with Patti Smart. (no relation I think) Patti was a flight attendant for 50 years. She flew with Aloha Airlines until she retired in 2007. She said that she applied to Hawaiian Airlines too,but she wasn't hired because she had freckles. "Things were done differently back then," she said.

Her classroom was aboard a DC3, flown by WWII pilots. While on probation, she was serving pineapple juice to passengers, when a woman's elbow knocked a tray she was holding and dumped it into her lap. She was soaked and sticky. And she did not have a replacement skirt. She had to made do with striped capris pants.

She washed the skirt, but there was no way to dry it. And as the DC-3's were not pressurized, the copilot opened slightly one of the windows. But it did not speed dry the skirt. So the window was opened all the way and out flew the skirt! She thought that she would be fired.

The pilot radioed dispatch and asked that her mother bring her another skirt when they landed. All the planes in the Pacific used the same radio frequency, so the story  of the skirt was heard and enjoyed by many.

The passengers took up a collection to buy her a new skirt. Her mother was angry as she had to stop cooking, and drive to the airport. There was no freeway, and it took time.

She was not fired, and retired at the age of 69, one of the senior flight attendants in the United States.

I borrowed the story from Bob Sigall, an excellent author and  writer for our local paper.

      Aloha
      Grant