Fly With Me

Becoming a stewardess in the 1960s meant glamour, travel to exotic cities, and freedom few women could imagine. What looked like opportunity was actually exploitation packaged in glamour.

Through archival footage and interviews with flight attendants who lived it, this American Experience documentary exposes systematic discrimination airlines built into the job: forced retirement at 32, racial barriers, unequal pay, and treatment as decorative servants rather than safety professionals. The film documents decades of battles—from Mary Pat Laffey Inman's 1970 lawsuit demanding equal pay to union organizing efforts that challenged these policies.

A vital history of how gender, race, and class intersected in one industry's transformation from subservience to equality.