Ellen Church was a registered nurse from Iowa and a girl in love with aviation. She even got his pilot’s license and tried to get a job with one of the airlines but in the 1930s this was a mission impossible for a woman. However she did not give up and when the folks at Boeing Air Transport (BAT, the forerunner of United Airlines) refused to give her a pilot job, she put forward another idea. BAT should employ nurses on board by way of alleviating the fear of flying that had been a very real problem for the airlines and their passengers back then.
The bosses at BAT realized the publicity value of Ellen’s proposal and in short order they hired eight nurses for a trial period of 3 months. Little did they know that the experiment would be such a resounding success that it continues to this day.
The company had set very rigorous conditions for the employment of those “sky girls” as they called them. They had to be single, not older than 25, not taller than 170 cm and weigh not more than 52 kilos.
They were a pretty bunch for sure but probably got the shock of their lives when they were told what the job involved. Other than looking after the passenger they had to look after the aircraft also: fix the odd loose part, help with fuelling and with loading luggage. I guess the least they could do was keep their nails short…
The very first flight on which one of the “sky girls” was flying as a member of the crew took off on 15 May 1930 on a trip from Oakland, California to Chicago, Illinois. The girl was Ellen Church and the flight took 20 hours, with 13 landings along the way…
