The Nation: Fly Me

Not long ago National Airlines began a $9.5 million advertising campaign aimed at personalizing its service. Ads picturing a lovely smiling stewardess proclaimed: “I’m Margie [or Nancy, or Cheryl, or Barbara]. Fly Me.” National painted the girls’ names on the noses of some of its planes—like World War II bombers—and passed out “Fly Me” buttons for the girls to wear on their uniforms.

Some National stewardesses decided that the idea amounted to a personal rather than a commercial proposition, and was a blatant sexist pitch. Three of them on a Halloween flight from New York to Miami displayed a cardboard cutout of a wrinkled witch in boots and military-type jacket with a Fly Me button. “If the ads would just say, ‘Fly with me,’ ” complained Stewardess Ilene Held, “we’d be asking people to fly as part of our airline. It’s the live stuff that gets to men, that makes them think ‘let’s fly with National and see what they have.’ ” Some stewardesses have refused to wear the buttons; Florida’s Dade County Circuit Court has turned down a national women’s organization request for a restraining order to ground the campaign. National pleads innocence. Says Public Relations Director Robert Mattel: “The stewardesses become an extension of the airline. We had no preconceived idea of injecting a suggestive leer into the campaign.”‘