Interviewed on February 11 and February 23, 2021
The interview describes the life and career of Bobbye (Barbara) Schott, a stewardess with Capital Airlines from 1957 until 1961, and a flight attendant and purser with United Air Lines until her retirement in 2001; childhood in a military family; early love of flying and travel; training and licensing with the Civil Air Patrol as a teenager in Florida; education at McConnell Airline School; decision to work for Capital Airlines; experiences working on the Douglas DC-3, interactions with commuting passengers, meal service; routes she flew from Washington, DC, to the South, west to Memphis, and north to Buffalo; incident while landing in Buffalo in a Vickers Viscount; incident with the Viscount on the airfield at Chicago Midway; incident she observed involving a Douglas DC-4 at Tri City Airport in Michigan; thoughts about an experiences on the Lockheed Constellation; transition to United Air Lines after the merger with Capital Airlines; cultural differences between the two airlines; her impressions of different United CEOs; transfer to United’s San Francisco base; experiences while flying the Hawaii routes; role as purser; transition to the MAC (Military Airlift Command) flights during the conflict in Vietnam in 1966; interactions with some of the servicemen; uniforms she wore during that era and the modifications that the flight attendants made; Babylift flights from Vietnam and a tragic incident that occurred on one of those flights; international routes from San Francisco to Sydney, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Paris, and Hawaii; work with the Association of Flight Attendants (union) as the Grievance Chair for San Francisco for marriage claims; experiences during the 1985 United Airlines Pilot Strike; effect on personnel relations at United; relates two anecdotes in which she paid for the airline fuel for her flights; recurrent training and how she felt about it; experiences on the MAC flights during the Gulf War and the contrast between that and Vietnam; decision to retire and her last flight; life after retirement; impressions of airline flight and flight attendants today.
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