63 Years Flying, From Glamour to Days of Gray

DENVER — As the crush of passengers boarded United Flight 618 to Hawaii here last month, they passed by a silver-haired flight attendant in bifocals who greeted them with an “Aloha, welcome aboard.”
 

[ Ron Akana may be the nation’s longest-serving flight attendant.] 

Mr. Akana, third from right, in his early days as a steward, when all seats were first class and Hawaii was 10 hours away.
 

 Most of them appeared more focused on finding their seats than sizing up the flight crew, but this flight attendant, Ron Akana, stood out, not least because of the 11 sparkling rhinestones on the wings pinned to his lapel. The first one was to commemorate his 10-year anniversary as a flight attendant, and he was given another for every subsequent five years of flying.

 Yes, Mr. Akana has worked as a flight attendant for 63 years, clocking some 20 million miles along the way, the equivalent of circling the globe about 800 times or flying roughly 40 times to the moon and back. Though no one tracks seniority across all airlines, he is widely believed to hold the title of longest-serving flight attendant in the United States.

 “People keep on telling me to apply to the Guinness Book of Records,” he said. “I’ll let somebody else do that."

 Mr. Akana, 83, has just about seen it all. In his early years, impeccably dressed passengers were served seafood salad and congregated at the cocktail bar on board. But he is also the face of a profession that has gone from glamorous to gray, as more flight attendants work longer than they ever imagined.

 More than 40 percent of the roughly 110,000 flight attendants in the United States are 50 or older, according to an analysis of 2010 census data by Rogelio Saenz, a sociologist at the University of Texas, San Antonio, who has studied the changing demographics of flight attendants. Less than 18 percent are 34 or younger.

 While the overall American work force has aged because of demographic shifts, the ranks of flight attendants have aged faster as they have held on to their jobs.

 After all, seniority pays off for flight attendants, because the longest-serving ones get first dibs on flying schedules, and typically choose long-haul routes that fill up their required hours each month much faster than short hops. With a battered airline industry instituting furloughs and pay cuts, many workers have delayed their retirement plans.

 Mr. Akana cannot lay claim to all bragging rights — he is not the oldest working flight attendant in the United States, for example. By many accounts, that distinction belongs to 87-year-old Robert Reardon of Delta Airlines. Mr. Reardon began his career flying for Northwest in 1951, two years after Mr. Akana took to the skies as one of the first male “stewards” hired by United in 1949 for flights between the mainland and Hawaii.

 Mr. Akana has held the No. 1 spot at United for the past five years, since Iris Peterson retired after 60 years of service at the age of 85.

 While many of his older colleagues are still flying because they have to, Mr. Akana said he does not work for the paycheck alone. At one time, just after he turned 70, Mr. Akana was among the highest-paid flight attendants at the airline, earning $106,000 a year through a combination of pay, pension and Social Security — a situation that has earned him a “triple dipper” label by younger colleagues and airline bookkeepers.

 “When I fly, it’s vacation money,” Mr. Akana likes to joke. But after flying for so many years, the idea of hanging up his sparkling wings is hard for him to fathom. He added that he would miss the people he works with, the passengers he meets and the routine he goes through for every trip, laying out his uniform and packing the night before.

 “I just always felt that it’s just too much a part of my life,” he said.

 Decades ago, hiring policies ensured that the ranks of flight attendants remained young. Stewardesses faced mandatory retirement by 32. If they married or became pregnant, they were out. In 1966, a New York Times classified ad for stewardesses at Eastern Airlines listed these requirements: “A high school graduate, single (widows and divorcees with no children considered), 20 years of age (girls 19 1/2 may apply for future consideration). 5’2” but no more than 5’9,” weight 105 to 135 in proportion to height and have at least 20/40 vision without glasses.

Stewards like Mr. Akana were not subject to quite as strict regulations. In 1963, he married a fellow flight attendant, Elizabeth Ann Ebersole. They met on Waikiki Beach six months earlier when a colleague played matchmaker. He continued to fly. She promptly quit.

[ Mr. Akana, third from right, in his early days as a steward, when all seats were first class and Hawaii was 10 hours away. ]

“In those days, you had to,” she said. “There was no way I could be sneaky about it.”

The next year, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, but it was not until years later, after numerous lawsuits against airlines’ discriminatory practices, that such rules fell away and what had been a transient job for primarily young women turned into a longtime career. Mr. Akana’s daughter, Jean, born that same year, is now a 22-year veteran flight attendant for United.

Her colleagues will not let her forget that she has a father who is famous at United. “The minute they hear my name, they go, ‘Wait, are you related to that Ron?’ ” she said.

As No. 1 on the list at newly merged United-Continental, Mr. Akana always gets the schedule he wants.  Lately that means three three-day trips a month from Denver to Kauai or Maui. He spends one night on the island, squeezing in lunch with old friends or perhaps a round of golf before heading back home to Boulder, Colo.

He has the rest of the month off, giving him time to work on his golf game, hop in his RV to visit a national park with his wife or take advantage of his United travel benefits to fly someplace new if seats are available.

Over the years Mr. Akana has taken his wife and two children all over the world free, including vacations to Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Hong Kong. There were also weekend jaunts to Chicago so the children could try deep-dish pizza.

Mr. Akana was a fresh-faced 21-year-old when he — along with 400 others — applied in 1949 for one of eight steward positions United wanted to fill to represent each of the eight major Hawaiian Islands.

“For a local Hawaiian boy, it was so exciting to get to the mainland,” said Mr. Akana, who was born and raised in Honolulu. “I looked around and thought, ‘I’ll never get this job.’ There were 400 other guys; half of them had coats and ties. All I had was an aloha shirt.”

But after the first cut, he began calling the hiring manager weekly to check in. His persistence paid off, and he was soon taking off on his first flight to the mainland.

Back then, the Boeing Stratocruiser, a long-range propeller plane powered by four piston engines, was state of the art, making the trip between the islands and the mainland in about 10 hours, roughly double the time it takes today.

Seats were all first class, with four bunk beds up front and a private stateroom in the back with its own beds and bathroom. A circular staircase led to a lower-deck cocktail lounge, and flight attendants prepared hot meals for the 52 to 54 people on board.

Passengers dressed up to fly. “All the men had suits and ties on. The ladies were always showcases of fashion,” Mr. Akana recalled. “There was no such thing as walking on a plane with slippers.”

Celebrity sightings were common, too. “I brought the whole cast of ‘From Here to Eternity’ to Hawaii,” he said, rattling off the list of stars that included Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr. “I made her bed in the stateroom. That was exciting,” he added. “Burt Lancaster had 12 or 13 martinis, then came and bartended with me as if he hadn’t had one.”

Bill Clinton, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr. and Red Skelton were among the notable passengers he has served. Mr. Skelton, sitting in the seat next to where Mr. Akana delivered the life vest demonstration, mimicked the entire routine. “It was hard enough for me to project my voice throughout the whole cabin without this guy, with his cigar unlit of course, carrying on. Oh, it was just so much fun,” Mr. Akana said, grinning from ear to ear. 

It was not all enchanting, of course. In the early days, Mr. Akana recalls, cigarette smoke filled the cabin as passengers lighted up after takeoff. And between flights, the aircraft was sprayed with pesticide while flight attendants were still on board. He has lived through decades of deregulation and the turbulent industry economics, including bankruptcies and cuts that stripped flights of most services.

As a result, he said, the job has fundamentally changed and service is no longer as important as it was when he started 63 years ago. “The focus is more on the safety things that you have to know, which is what we claim is the most important thing,” he said on a recent morning on the way to the airport.

All along Mr. Akana has remained a loyal company man, but he is beginning to think about retirement. After so many years of flying, he and his wife want to see the country by RV and perhaps take a cruise.

Mr. Akana acknowledges that he is starting to slow down a bit. “We get an average of four or five wheelchairs a trip,” said Mr. Akana, who underwent knee replacement surgery last year. “I know our bones fail; I’m beginning to feel it myself. Most of the people I help, I’m older than them.”

http://vimeo.com/38787792
 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/us/63-years-flying-from-glamour-to-days-of-gray.html  

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