While the term "stewardess" was already going out of style and getting replaced by "flight attendant" by the 1960s, female flight attendants often report that it comes up from the odd passenger fairly frequently — often followed by a request to bring something to their seat.
Particularly when it comes to the assumption that any female air crew worker one sees is one, the term is often tinged with sexist connotations. Earlier this week, a female Delta Air Lines (DAL) pilot called out a senator who repeatedly called her a "stewardess" even after she introduced herself and her role.
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"My name is Laura Haynor, and I'm a Minnesota resident and a Minneapolis-based pilot for Delta Airlines," Haynor testified during a court hearing on proposed amendments to the state's safe and sick time law for state employees. She was speaking on behalf of Air Line Pilots Association International.
Mistaken for a flight attendant: 'I'm a first officer for Delta...'
Gene Dornink, a Republican senator representing Minnesota's 27th district, almost immediately followed with a request for Haynor to walk him through "what a typical workweek is like for you as a stewardess."
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"I'm a first officer for Delta, I'm a pilot for Delta" Haynor said before continuing to describe her typical day at work. Dornink immediately apologized and said he doesn't know "why [he] said that" but the hearing clip went viral as an example of the type of assumptions female pilots will often face about their work.
Several people who were following the testimony reposted the clip on different social media platforms — one of the most viral ones was upvoted more than 500,000 times.
'Stewardess stopped being a job title around when in-flight cigs did'
"She said pilot at least 4 times in her intro and he still called her a stewardess," Kilday Morris wrote on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Minnesota Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar also weighed in by reposting the clip that took place in her home state and reminding people to be conscious of "biases and assumptions."
"You're a woman, so you must be a stewardess," Omar wrote in her post. "Let's take a moment to check our own biases and assumptions."
Others also pointed out that Dornink had used the outdated word for flight attendant despite the fact that the industry stopped using it multiple decades ago.
"Even if he got it 'right' he was ironically still wrong," wrote Google (GOOG) VP Sarah Kennedy Ellis. "'Stewardess' stopped being a job title around when in flight cigs did."
"Rooted in history, we still sometimes get called 'stewardess' or 'air hostess,'" longtime flight attendant and industry commentator Patricia Green wrote in a post about her job in August 2023. "These terms were used in the 1960s and 1970s when the roles were designated to only young, single, attractive females. It was seen as a glamorous profession, and airlines used their stewardesses to sell the airline to a primarily male businessmen audience. After that, we became cabin crew and flight attendants, a term much more suited to all genders."
