PRESS RELEASE
On Feb. 10 The Museum of Flight will offer a preview screening and filmmaker discussion of Fly With Me, a new documentary premiering on the PBS American Experience series. The film looks back to the 1960s and the times that followed when flight attendants were maligned as feminist sellouts, yet they were on the frontlines of a battle to assert gender equality and transform the workplace. A panel discussion after the screening will include the film’s writer and co-director Sarah Colt, author and former airline attendant Ann Hood, and Mary Pat Laffey Inman, the airline purser whose 1970 class-action lawsuit demanding equal pay for women pursers helped change workplace equality. The 3 p.m. event is free with Museum membership and included with general admission. Space is limited and pre-registration is suggested.
Watch the Fly With Me trailer.
Fly With Me Panelists:
Sarah Colt (Fly With Me Director, Writer) has directed and produced multiple documentaries for American Experience, including the Emmy-nominated Walt Disney, The Gilded Age, Henry Ford, The Polio Crusade, and, most recently, Billy Graham, which premiered in 2021. She founded Sarah Colt Productions in 2008 and has earned several awards for her work, including an Emmy and a Peabody nomination.
Mary Pat Laffey Inman became the first woman hired as a purser by Northwest Airlines. In 1970, she filed a class-action lawsuit to demand equal pay for women as pursers, beginning a legal journey taking 14 years until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor.
Ann Hood was a TWA flight attendant for eight years beginning in 1978. She published her first novel in 1987 and has written more than a dozen award-winning books including Fly Girl, her recently published memoir about her career as a flight attendant.
Emmy Award winning Executive Producer of American Experience, Cameo George will moderate the panel discussion. George is a producer, writer and journalist with more than 20 years of experience in documentary, broadcast television and digital content production.
Founded in 1965, the independent, nonprofit Museum of Flight is one of the largest air and space museums in the world, annually serving over 600,000 visitors. The Museum’s collection includes more than 160 historically significant airplanes and spacecraft, from the first fighter plane (1914) to today’s 787 Dreamliner. Attractions at the 23-acre, 5-building Seattle campus include the original Boeing Company factory, the NASA Space Shuttle Trainer, Air Force One, Concorde, Lockheed Blackbird and Apollo Moon rockets. In addition to the Seattle campus adjacent to King County International Airport, the Museum also has its 3-acre Restoration Center and Reserve Collection at Paine Field in Everett (not currently open to the public).
With a foundation of aviation history, the Museum is also a hub of news and dialogue with leaders in the emerging field of private spaceflight ventures. The Museum’s aviation and space library and archives are the largest on the West Coast. More than 150,000 individuals are served annually by the Museum’s onsite and outreach educational programs. The Museum of Flight is accredited by the American Association of Museums, and is an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The learn more about The Museum of Flight, visit the website: https://www.museumofflight.org/