Fasten Your Seat Belts! History and Heroism in the Pan Am Cabin

Fasten Your Seat Belts! is the first history of an airline told from the viewpoint of its cabin crew. Through hundreds of interviews, Valerie Lester has encouraged Pan Am's flight attendants to recount their dramatic, tragic, comic, and heroic stories. She records the courageous deeds of the cabin crews in the 1947 crash in the Syrian desert; the terrorism in Cairo and Rome; the last flight from Saigon; the holocaust at Tenerife; and the siege at Karachi. And she shares tales of the first stewards and their experiences during World War II; Pan Am's brave and resourceful first stewardesses; the first round-the-world flights; the White House Press charters; the advent of jets; and Pan Am's final, heart-rending flight. Here at last is a book that draws attention to the crucial role that flight attendants have played in the history civil aviation.