Is it true that most airline stewards are gay? Was it ever? How did their legal battles with airlines help advance gay rights and workplace gender equity? 

In this “throwback” edition of Out in the Bay, first aired a decade ago, we also hear about the myth of “Patient Zero” – a flight attendant accused of being the initial transcontinental spreader of HIV.

Stow your tray tables and put your seats in their fully upright and locked positions for a quick flight through the history of airline flight attendants. Eric Jansen’s entertaining and talkative guest is (was*) Philadelphia University* history professor Phil Tiemeyer, author of the intriguing book Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality and AIDS in the history of male flight attendants, published by University of California Press. 

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*{Tiemeyer is now a professor at Kansas State University.  He spoke with us in 2013. We bring it to you now as KALW’s Queer Power Hour re-airs it tonight (Aug 10, 2023). It was first broadcast May 16, 2013; rebroadcast 8/1/2013 and in July 2014}