After 63 years, flight attendant has no plans to land in retirement
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.”
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, 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 longestserving 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.”
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 requiredhourseachmonthmuch faster than short hops. With a battered airline industry instituting furloughs and pay cuts, many workers have delayed their retirement plans.
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. Reardon began his career flying for Northwest in 1951, two years after Akana took to the skies as one of the first male “stewards” hired by United in 1949 for flights between the mainland and Hawaii.
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, Akana said he does not work for the paycheck alone. At one time, just after he turned 70, 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,” Akana likes to joke. But after flying for so many years, the idea of hanging up his sparkling wings is difficult for him to fathom. He added that he would miss the people he workswith, 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 19½ 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 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, Hawaii, six months earlier when a colleague played matchmaker. He continued to fly. She promptly quit.
“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. 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.