SAN FRANCISCO — The foremost authority on flight attendant history and the International Historian for the Association of Flight Attendants, AFL-CIO, Georgia Panter Nielsen concludes her career as a working United Airlines flight attendant on Tuesday, March 26, after 42 years of flying, an AFA press release reports.
Nielsen’s last trip, United flight 862 from Sydney, arrives in San Francisco at 9:35 a.m., Tuesday.
Nielsen began researching the history of her union as a university project in the 1970s. In 1980, AFA’s Board of Directors chose her to be the union’s International Historian and in 1982, Nielsen authored “From Sky Girl to Flight Attendant: Women and the Making of a Union,” the most complete account of the flight attendant profession ever published.
To tie her experience in the airline industry with her passion for writing, Nielsen founded “Air Reporter,” a quarterly San Francisco-based newspaper for airline and airport workers in 1991. She also adapted a flight attendant union history script for “We Do the Work,” the award-winning, Berkeley-based national television series committed to labor and workplace issues. Nielsen is a member of the Board of Directors for the United Airlines Historical Foundation, and authored a ten-decade retrospective of flight attendant history for United’s website that launched progressively in 2000 and 2001.
“The lessons that have been learned over the years make us wiser, stronger and better advocates for flight attendants today,” said AFA International President Patricia Friend. “One of Georgia’s most enduring gifts to our profession is the way she has provided a connection between the union’s founders and today’s leadership. Her work shows how past struggles have turned into great accomplishments. Georgia has been the consummate representative of our profession, meticulously documenting the past and preserving it for our future.”
“Her work has brought awareness to the evolution of our profession over the years,” said United AFA Master Executive Council President Linda Farrow. “Her book was desperately needed as the first in-depth account of our profession, which has generated the respect, the recognition and the place in history flight attendants deserve.”
But Nielsen did more than record history; she made it. As an eight-year AFA local president based in San Francisco, Nielsen forged the way for the flight attendants’ participation in the AFL-CIO. Her local membership was the first council to vote to join their local AFL-CIO Central Labor Council in 1982. Nielsen also worked to strengthen the labor community within her airline by arranging the first local coalition meeting of AFA, the Air Line Pilots Association and the International Association of Machinists.
Nielsen also pioneered the union’s political involvement. Under her leadership, the local membership endorsed a political candidate for the first time in the union’s history. In 1983, she created the first legislative affairs committee within AFA, which has blossomed into a powerful platform for flight attendants to engage Congress in health and safety issues and most recently to strengthen security in our nation’s airports and on aircraft.
More than 50,000 flight attendants join together to form AFA, the world’s largest flight attendant union.