If Job Is There, Do You Stay?

The veteran flight attendant closes her eyes but can’t shake the image: She is inside that plane, plowing into the World Trade Center.

She tries to explain, then chokes on the words. Even now, tears come easily. Sleep eludes her. She doesn’t eat. Her head pounds.

After 29 years of flying cross-country for United Airlines, Joyce Berks-Fitzhugh can’t go back to work. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Another United crew member, four-year veteran Theresa Wekid, worries herself sick over a different matter: job security. She wonders about how deep the cuts will go and whether they will be enough to save the airline.

Along with personal grief, the nation’s 100,000 flight attendants are struggling with two life-altering traumas: workplace terror and massive job cuts. “Both are happening on an unprecedented scale and simultaneously,” said Michael Buckley, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO transportation division. “There’s no question it’s a very, very difficult time for flight attendants.”

Airlines were already in trouble before Sept. 11. Now many are a short step from bankruptcy. With a few exceptions, U.S. carriers large and small have cut service by 20% or more. Announced layoffs or job cuts have reached about 80,000, and the numbers are still climbing.

Such deep, industrywide cuts would be wrenching enough on their own. But now they are falling on a work force that is already shaken to the core.

The terrorist attacks set off a period of soul-searching that has led hundreds, perhaps thousands, of flight attendants to rethink their job choice.

“I’m definitely looking into a new career,” said Eleanor Bell, a 12-year American employee and mother of a 3-year-old. “Maybe court reporting. Something stable, with regular hours.

“It’s not just out of fear. I don’t think it’s going to be the same kind of job. The level of service will change. The security will be much tougher. It’s not going to be as much fun anymore.”

Others, determined to stay in jobs they love, have taken a longer view of the attacks--as one awful event that will change the business but not destroy it.

“I lived through the Vietnam War and helped with the evacuations,” said Dottie Malinsky, a Northwest Airlines attendant for 35 years. “I went through the hijackings in the ‘70s. I volunteered to fly to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.

“The business changed after all of those other events. Now we have another shift in the paradigm of the world, so I guess we’ll have to shift and deal with it. The people who survive in this job are the ones that can roll with the punches and be flexible.”

Crew Members Search for the Right Response

The vast majority of crew members find themselves somewhere in the middle, searching for balance, for the right tone, the right response. They fly, but with misgivings. They make deals with themselves--a flight to Hawaii is OK, but maybe not to Boston.

Many have called in sick or taken unpaid leave, buying time to sort through their emotions. At the same time, they long for the understanding and support that comes only from fellow flight attendants.

“I keep checking lists [of scheduled crews]. When I see my friends’ names, I think, ‘Gee, if they can do it, I can do it,’ ” said Diane Cullen-Ruck, a United employee for 20 years who is still working up the nerve to fly to the East Coast. “It gives me courage.”

So far, airlines, which secured billions in federal aid late last week, have accommodated reluctant crew members by shifting schedules. With service cut by 20% to 25% and many planes flying half full, they can afford to.

But as the industry moves quickly to shave costs, many employees are trying to make career decisions in a hurry. After all, each resignation means one less flight attendant gets a furlough notice.

That grim calculation shows how remarkably the industry has changed from just six months ago, when airlines faced a flight attendant shortage. “They had to really recruit,” said Thomas Monaghan, publisher of AviationCareer.net, an online industry publication. “It’s not the glorified thing it used to be.”

Blame part of that on deregulation, fare wars and the advent of packed jumbo jets, which in some cases reduced meal service to handing out peanuts and soda. “We used to attract a different kind of passenger because it was so expensive,” Malinsky said. “Now middle America is able to fly, which is good. But the throngs of people have changed the face of aviation. We don’t have the elaborate service we used to have.”

Other drawbacks have surfaced lately, including health problems related to all those hours in pressurized cabins and “air rage” stemming from crowding and delays. Even though the job has well-known perks, including free air travel and flexible schedules, it is hardly lucrative. Salaries start at less than $20,000 and top out at about $40,000.

It is little wonder, then, that some flight attendants might look at Sept. 11 as the last straw.

Airlines and their unions, seeking to reassure the public that flying is safe, have downplayed employee fears and said mass resignations are highly unlikely. No numbers have been released, but that hasn’t stopped the circulation of unconfirmed reports that 1,500 are gone from United, 400 from Delta, 2,000 from American.

“The estimates are astronomical,” said Dawn Deeks, a spokeswoman for the Assn. of Flight Attendants, which represents about 50,000 airline workers. “There are no facts to back them up. We don’t have any numbers.”

A Chance to Mourn With ‘Airline Family’

Last week, at a memorial service for flight attendants near Los Angeles International Airport, however, fear was on everyone’s mind. “Have you flown yet?” colleagues asked each other gingerly. “Can you?”

The service at Dockweiler State Beach drew hundreds of uniformed crew members from United and American airlines, the two companies whose planes were turned into terrorist missiles in the attacks.

Grateful for a chance to hug, cry and mourn with their “airline family,” the crews lit candles and tossed carnations into the surf. Jetliners roared through the fog above them, lights piercing the sky, diffused, ghostly.

There and then, many vowed to carry on, portraying a return to work as a tribute to those who died. “We will not give in to terror,” pronounced a tearful John Nikides, Los Angeles chairman of the Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents 26,000 American Airlines employees.

But family pressures and belief systems may be paramount factors in the decision to go on--or not. Flight attendants at either end of the seniority scale, close to retirement or just starting out, are most likely to leave, union officials said. Also likely to be tempted are those with young children, second jobs or spouses able to support them through a transition.

Psychological and Physical Reactions

Another important factor seems to be what happened in the days after the attack.

Some, like Berks-Fitzhugh, sat frozen in their living rooms, hypnotized by news broadcasts that showed the World Trade Center crash over and over again. Horrible, unconfirmed details stuck with them: The flight attendants’ hands were bound. Crew members were stabbed first, to lure pilots out of the cockpit.

Isolated and afraid, Berks-Fitzhugh suffered a range of debilitating physical reactions. Finally, she called United’s Employee Assistance Program and set up a counseling session.

“They said exercise would help, so I went to the gym. Believe it or not, I’m actually feeling better now,” she said, wiping away tears that would not stop. She planned a visit to church with her sister, who is also a flight attendant. “I need that spiritual release. I need to work through all this.”

She’s had plenty of company. Equipped for tragedy, airlines and their unions maintain entire departments to counsel employees and their families after crashes or other catastrophic events. But this time, several union leaders said, there is not enough help to go around.

“It’s been overwhelming,” said Patricia Friend, president of the Assn. of Flight Attendants. “We’re keeping an open telephone line staffed in this office, and we have a hotline to our [Employee Assistance Program], but it’s not enough. We’ve had to go to the Red Cross for help.”

Many simply seek reassurance that their responses are normal, that symptoms from sleeplessness to diarrhea will fade over time. The counselors offer a human voice, a word of kindness, a way to get through just this day.

In a way, the lucky ones were stranded together in the eerie days just after the attacks. They had each other.

Heather Behr, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant for just six months, was due to fly back to her New York base that Tuesday morning. Instead, she spent the next three days in a Detroit hotel, watching a big-screen television with 75 other flight attendants and pilots.

“It was very stressful, very emotionally draining,” she said. “A lot of flight attendants there were mothers, and they just wanted to go home, to be with their families. Most people at the beginning didn’t know if they wanted to fly again, but I would say at the end of the week they were more settled. They had time to take in what happened, to rethink their situation.

”. . . For me, I truly believe things that are meant to be, will be, regardless. And I love traveling, meeting new people. It’s a great job. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to let the terrorists change my happiness in what I’m doing right now.”

As the shock and grief fade, many crew members hunger for information. But details of how layoffs will be implemented have been slow in coming, largely because the airlines themselves are unsure.

“We still don’t have any numbers,” said the AFL-CIO’s Buckley, on the day American and United announced massive job cuts last week. “It takes a couple of days just to figure out how to lay off 20,000 people.”

A Job and Industry Forever Changed

Even those most determined to stay know their jobs, like the entire airline industry, will be forever changed.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like to [work] on an international flight with plastic silverware in first-class cabins,” said Malinsky, who’s been in the business long enough to remember real china and white-glove service. Now, with corkscrews and knives banished, there will be no more wine bottles popping, no more fat steaks in the front of the plane.

Security will be tougher and take longer. And that means passengers, already grumpier in recent years over flight delays and crowded planes, might now plop down in their seats fuming about picky screeners at the metal detector.

And, at least in the near future, airplanes and airports may be eerily quiet. “Our flights used to be full,” said Behr, the Northwest attendant. “Now they’re less than half full. It’s just weird to see that compared to what we used to have.”

At the same time, passengers have come to appreciate flight attendants for more than handing out snacks and collecting empty cups. “This helps them see that we’re not just the waitress in the sky,” Behr said. “We’ve been trained to help them out in a crisis situation. Most of our training is on safety, not service, but people usually don’t see that side of it.”

Indeed, on her first flight since the attack, an LAX-to-Hawaii leg last week, Cullen-Ruck of United said passengers applauded the crew after takeoff. The return flight was a different matter. “We had the usual griping about the food and the service,” she said with a laugh. “I guess that’s a good sign.”