Time flies? Not for 81- yr- old US air hostess Nash
Washington: American Airlines Flight 2160 from Boston has just arrived in Washington, D. C., and Bette Nash, 81, helps the passengers disembark. They embrace her, take photos, and express their thanks. It’s always like this.
After six decades crossing the skies as a flight attendant, Nash still has impeccable style, incredible energy and a constant smile. She has lost only one thing: her anonymity.
In a dark suit accented by a coloured scarf, with her hair in a bun, Nash lends herself to accolades and plays with the compliments. She is the undisputed star of the Airbus jet, rather than the captain, Mike Margiotta, who emerges from the flight deck. “Very professional,” he says of his model hostess. “She’s got that oldschool way of doing things.”
In the US, pilots must retire at 65 but there is no such restriction on commercial flight attendants, of whom Bette Nash is probably the world’s most senior. See her gliding through the terminal concourse, pulling her suitcase, and it’s hard not to be taken by the admiring words one hears about her.
“I start my day at 2: 10 in the morning. I have two alarm clocks and when they go off I don’t lie there, I get up,” Nash says.
At her home in Virginia, bordering Washington, Nash prepares food for her only son, who is disabled, and who will be waiting for her return to solid ground.
Primped, and fueled by “a couple of eggs,” she arrives before sunrise at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Nash prefers the Wa s h i n g t o n - B o s t o n - Washington route, on which she gets priority because of her incomparable seniority.
She was 21 years young and Dwight Eisenhower was president when Eastern Air Lines recruited her as a “stewardess,” a word which — like Eastern itself — has disappeared from use. At that time, travel by air was the preserve of a certain elite.
“There were a lot of men because they were doing business, and women came on with their fur coats, and their finery and their hats and everything. You didn’t have... the flip- flops and the sneakers and things you do today,” Nash says.
Her own uniforms ranged, through the years, from conservative, to elegant, and “wild.” “When ( president) John Kennedy came into office, things started opening up, so we wore crazy uniforms. We even had hot pants for a brief period, and these boots,” she recalls.