Continental's Last Day

I spent 14 years working for Continental Airlines, and I like many past and present employees of the 'Proud Bird With The Golden Tail' are saddened that today is the last one that Continental will be flying around the world as an independent air carrier.

76 years of airline history goes away tomorrow as the Continental-United merger takes effect.  The merged carrier will be based in Chicago and bear the United name but keep the Continental golden globe logo and the CAL colors on its aircraft.


Tomorrow a new carrier emerges that will the largest airline in the world.  The stock gets merged tomorrow, but it will be a few years before the other physical changes like new uniforms, aircraft being painted over and signage replacement happens before the Continental name fades into aviation history for good. 

The globe logo and the colors will endure for a while as the new logo and colors of the merged airline.

But for those of us who were part of its remarkable 76 year history and who busted our behinds to turn it from worst to award winning first during the 90's and keep it there, it will be a bittersweet day.

Guess Where The Best Airports In The Country Are?

Travel and Leisure magazine recently surveyed its readers about 30 US airports on a variety of fronts such as food, shopping, on-time performance, and the efficiency (or potential surliness) of airport employees and ranked them.

The five worst according to Travel and Leisure readers?

5. Boston
4. Washington DC
3. St. Louis
2. Los Angeles
1. New York

The five best?

5. Providence, RI
4. Portland, OR
3. Minneapolis-St. Paul
2. Orlando

And the city with the best airports?

1.Houston

We're number one! We're number one!

I'm not surprised since I worked at IAH for 14 years, saw many of the improvements the Houston Airport Authority invested it hat went into making IAH and HOU more travel friendly and the hard work my old Continental coworkers and the other air carriers put into getting people out on time and as in friendly a manner as possible.

This news makes it even sadder that the Continental-United merger is one step closer to happening.

But congratulations people, you earned it.

A Tale Of Two Flight Attendants

As a former airline employee, I've been following the story of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who went off on a still unidentified female passenger.

He shouted obscenities over the PA, grabbed a beer and deployed the emergency slide when the JetBlue flight parked at JFK in a dramatic resignation that earned him a trip to jail and has him facing federal prosecution and seven years in a Club Fed facility.

But what if flight attendant Steven Slater had been Black?

I already know the answer to that question because just five years ago, there was a very different reaction for one of my former CAL co-workers, flight attendant Sharon Brown.

And before I delve into this post, in the interest of journalistic integrity, during my time I worked at CAL I met, worked multiple flights at my gates with Ms. Brown as part of the flight attendant crew and had some long conversations with her at various times.

Now back to your regularly scheduled TransGriot post.

She had a December 19, 2005 confrontation with Lakewood Church's Victoria Osteen in which she was according to her attorney thrown against a first class lavatory door and elbowed in her breast while Osteen tried to bumrush the cockpit.

And the reason for all that drama? Because Brown didn't in Osteen's estimation clean up a spill in her first class seat fast enough to her liking.

The altercation led to Osteen and her family being asked to leave the flight to Vail, CO and eventually paying a $3,000 FAA fine for interfering with a crew member. A subsequent $500,000 assault lawsuit filed by Brown was later dismissed two years ago this week.

The thing that I'm noticing is the differing reactions to Slater's and Brown's cases. Slater is being hailed as a hero. Brown was accused of 'playing the race card'.

Exhibit A The Houston Press August 8, 2008
scott says:

this sharon brown thinks just because she is black she can get her way bull crap if this happen in 2005 then why is she now just cring about it it's 2008 something wrong in this picture and she claims she lost faith and received injurys come on what kind of games is she playing here it's all about money an IM sure she offer marie johnson a small cut if she testfied for her where's the proof of damange and if u lost faith in god don't blame mrs osteen for it she can't make you so brown and johnson just grow up and ask god forgivness and your lawyer has to be an idiot for repesenting you and any one in that courtroom believing ms brown something is wrong with you.should have brown and johnson take a lie detecter test.

Exhibit B The Chocolate City Blog

Denise
Ms. Brown behavior is nothing but that of an opportunistic low life individual trying to reach the fast pace of success through someone else’s hard work. She needs to find a real job!
9:54 PM on 8/13/08

And I'll spare y'all the really vile crap I stumbled across on the white supremacist site Stormfront.

Sharon Brown didn't get a Facebook page with thousands of followers hailing her as a shero for doing her job and standing up to someone with wealth and fame behaving badly. She just got reviled, disrespected, called an opportunist, her sanity questioned and what happened to her on that Vail flight belittled and dismissed.

Slater's case has yet to finish playing out. We still don't know anything else about the female passenger that triggered this incident. I'm curious to see if this mystery passenger is a POC and how that affects the public perceptions of Slater.

But once again, this tale of two flight attendants points out just how much race affects the perceptions of everyday incidents in America.

Well, At Least They Kept The Colors

As some of you TransGriot readers know, I spent 14 years in the airline industry working for Continental Airlines at IAH.

So when the announcement was made yesterday that United Airlines and Continental had reached agreement on a merger deal, even though I was hearing the chatter about the deal last weekend.there was a little bit of sadness in it for me.

My late grandfather worked for CAL for 35 years, and I was a second generation employee that came in during the 1987 merger with CAL, Texas International, People's Express and Frontier under Frank Lorenzo.

I was there when the airline literally went from worst to award winning first, dealing with a bankruptcy along the way and other soap opera-novel worthy drama.

But we always had (and still do) have some great people at IAH and other places around the CAL system who loved the 'Proud Bird With The Golden Tail' and busted their butts to provide quality service regardless of the circumstances.

Some have retired, some have left us, some have transferred to other places, but I've been getting reconnected lately with many of my CAL coworkers through Facebook.

So now that the deal is done and pending regulatory approval would create the worlds largest airline, what's next short of the Continental name will disappear like Pan Am, TWA, Ozark and all the other airlines formed during the air travel golden age?

The merged company will have CAL's Jeff Smisek as its CEO, but the corporate HQ of the merged carrier will be in Chicago.

That means some of my friends at the downtown HQ may be moving to Chitown. IAH will have hub status, but where Cleveland will fit is going to be the interesting question.

CAL has a predominately Boeing fleet, while UA has an Airbus dominated one.

We'll see how this plays out over the rest of the year, but after 76 years, the Continental Airlines name will no longer grace the side of an airplane.

Continental Airlines Turns 75

As many of you longtime TransGriot readers know, I worked for CAL for 14 years during Frank Lorenzo's, Hollis Harris' and Gordon Bethune's tenures with the airline.

My grandfather spent 35 years working for CAL until he passed away in 1984. I started working there three years later and was working there when I transitioned. It wasn't unusual for me to be sporting stuff from the 'Proud Bird with the Golden Tail' as a kid and I still have a lot of stuff with the CAL logo on it.

During my recent trip to Bryn Mawr I flew the Philadelphia bound legs on Continental. I was reminded when I perused my drink napkin that this was the airline's 75th anniversary year.

I changed planes in Cleveland (sorry IAH). During my Cleveland layover and on the flight to Philadelphia I thought about all the wonderful people I worked with at IAH and elsewhere in the CAL system. Some of them I'm still blessed to call my friends and some I've only recently reconnected with.

And yeah, I miss the airline industry. My former co-workers over the last few weeks have let me know how much they miss me as well.

Back in the 80's and 90's it was a fun job at times to have. But there were the moments when I had the dreaded ATC delays that had me staying at Intercontinental until 1 AM in the morning or later cleaning up the backlogged flights or handling passenger problems.

I was also proud of being part of the rebirth of Continental's proud legacy. The Proud Bird slipped badly during the contentious Lorenzo era and had become one of the worst airlines in the industry. I was happy to part of the effort in the 90's to make it one of the best

I still pay attention to developments at CAL and in the airline industry. I've noticed since I left it has been a challenging time for all airlines and I've had my moments in which I'd wondered about where my life would be now if I were still there.

That musing led me to write a novel manuscript I titled 'On The Wings Of Love' which is loosely based on my CAL days. One of these days I'll get around to writing about some of my airline adventures and getting that novel published.

But just wanted to take a moment to say congrats to all the CAL folks I know, have known and who are no longer here who kept the 'Proud Bird' flying for 75 years.

More Flight Anxiety For Transpeople As New TSA Rules Implemented

I worked for Continental Airlines for over a decade and spent a lot of time on my off days flying the friendly skies before 9-11. Thanks to some of my speaking engagements I have had the opportunity to experience post 9-11 air travel.

Whether it was before or after 9-11, it's an irritating challenge at times to travel as a transperson. I do have some stories I'll talk about in later posts about my own personal drama with flying while transgender.

What's driving this post is the news that TSA regulations will soon take effect that require all passengers to declare their full name, age, and gender to book travel.

This is related to the Transportation Security Administration effort to streamline their Secure Flight database and reduce the number of times a passenger is misidentified as a possible terrorist.

But since policies have unintended consequences, many of us in the transgender community are nervously apprehensive about how things will shake out once these procedures are implemented.

The first implementation phase of the initiative required that airlines collect the names of all passengers as shown verbatim on government-issued identification.

The next phase began August 15 on several air carriers. It requires passengers to declare their gender at the time of booking their flights.

By the end of March 2010 all companies will be required to obtain gender information from persons booking travel.

TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird told Advocate.com in a recent interview that transgender travelers who are purchasing tickets should declare "the gender that they were at the time that they booked their flight."

However, Baird said he was unsure whether those who don't identify with a specific gender or are in transition would be held to the same rules.

Kristina Wertz, the Transgender Law Center's legal director, said the new regulations will likely exacerbate airport hassles that some transgender people already face while traveling.

No kidding. One of the potential consequences of having your trans business disclosed is a situation in which the traveling transperson could be subjected to harassment, disrespect and discrimination by airline personnel, security, customs officials if they're travelling internationally and other passengers.

One major reason it happens as Kristina Wertz points out and I can tell you from my time as an airline employee is government issued ID's, passports and other documents that don't match the current gender presentation of the person possessing it.

"A lot of transgender people don't have documents that match up with how they currently identify. There are always troubles that arise when dealing with documents. People are sometimes forced to disclose their transgender status in a situation where they may not want to."

Wertz said she hopes that the TSA is open to receiving training on transgender issues to prevent uncomfortable situations at the airport.

In the interim, the transgender community will be anxiously watching how these new rules impact our flying experiences at our local airports.

Confessions Of A GLBT Airline Employee

The recent Bilerico post concerning my GLBT airline brothers and sisters who've lost their jobs was a deja vu moment for me.

One of my nicknames in the transgender community is the Air Marshal because I worked for 14 years for CAL at IAH.

Oops, drifting into airline speak again.

I was the rapid response team for the transgender community during my early activist years. If we had a problem or needed someone representing us for a short notice protest or board meeting, I got called.

I miss it so much I wrote a novel in 2003 that weaves some of my airline experiences into the plot called On The Wings of Love

I started working for Continental in 1987 during the Frank Lorenzo regime. I remember telling friends after my grandfather passed away in 1984 and had worked 35 years for CAL that I wouldn't be caught dead there while he was running the place. I was upset that the 'Proud Bird with the Golden Tail's' quality reputation, as Continental's ad slogan was back in the day had been sullied by Lorenzo's union busting and heavy-handed diss the employees management style..

But since it was the Reagan years and jobs were scarce I reluctantly took it after resisting the suggestion from my dad for three years because I wanted to start in passenger service, not the ramp. I spent a miserable but fun year on the IAH ramp before I finally got the promotion to passenger service I wanted in June 1988 and subsequently ended up in Denver spending the month of July 1988 at old Stapleton Airport in training.

I loved the international and multicultural aspect of working for an airline. We had people from 40 countries and all 50 states and territories that worked at IAH. That multicultural aspect of our employee base also included GLBT peeps as well.

I also noted that it was consistent throughout the industry when I started non-revving all over the place once my pass privileges kicked in (I miss the Golden Handcuffs, too). As a gate agent and later a CSR and supervisor I got to interact with a lot of GLBT pilots, flight attendants, fellow gate emplyees and supervisors at mine and other carriers.

I also got to interact with GLBT customers, and I'll save those stories for another post.

Because I was the lone African-American on my gates for a few years with the exception of a few supervisors who became my airline mentors, I spent down time between flights in the flight attendant lounge hanging out.with my high school classmate Melanie and other Afriican-Americans. I got to meet some wonderful people and I still laugh about one visit to the company store which at that time before they moved the crew lounge to more spacious digs was down the hall.

I was grabbing snacks and was standing next to a 'family' flight attendant who was playing with a model of a DC-10. He held it in his hand like it was flying in straight level flight for a few seconds then nosedived it into a pile of t-shirts while singsonging the words "Death cruiser." It was a sarcastic nickname they had for the plane that referenced the DC-10's propensity to crash when they first entered airline fleets in the 70's before they fixed the problem. We used to call the A300 Airbus the 'Scarebus' because of the way it rattled like it was going to break apart when you revved the bird up for takeoff.

I saw the effects of the HIV/AIDS crisis reflected in the airline ranks as well. There were more than a few times I popped down in the crew lounge to say hello to some people and was greeted at the door of the crew lounge with a memorial photo and burning candle memorializing another co-worker who lost their battle with AIDS.

Before I transitioned I used to spend a lot of time in Montrose crossdressed . There were more than a few times I'd bounce into Charlie's, the gay-owned 24 hour restaurant and coffee shop in the heart of Houston's gayborhood and run into fellow employees there or at Studio 13, the Black gay hangout. There were also moments in which I had co-workers come out. Every time it happened, I had to ask myself when I was finally going to address my own gender issues and do the same thing they were doing.

I remember when one of my fellow Latina CSR's transferred to Inflight. I used to good naturedly tease Gloria because every time I saw her cute, petite self, she was standing in front of one of the floor length mirrors we had in various breakrooms around the terminal. Her makeup bag was open, not a hair out of place and she'd be applying mascara to those long eyelashes of hers that framed her wide light gray eyes

We'd become good friends over time and she came out a few months later. I was one of the first people she told because I knew her partner as well and she was worried about losing my friendship, I told her I had my own issues and that we were friends for life as she hugged me. Gloria ended up being one of the first people I told about my own transition in 1994. It was interesting to note that when I finally did so, over the next few weeks several people in various departments came out as well.

Since I worked the gates my transition was a very public one. I felt like I was in a fishbowl with 30,000 passengers a day transiting Terminal C at the time, and my co-workers got to watch me morph in front of their very eyes into the Phenomenal Transwoman.

The GLBT ones in and out of the closet welcomed me into the family. There were varying reactions from my straight counterparts. One interesting reaction was the way the guys shunned me for a few weeks, then resumed conversing with me three months later. It was as if I was beig severed from the Masculine Borg collective. The women embraced me almost immediately, and there was one memorable conversation in which I ended up in the breakroom with several sistahs and they laid out the Sistah's Rules of Femininity to me during a 45 minute break between flights. The fundies just tried to proselytize me.

In those early transition days I did a Terminal C listening tour in which I made it clear that anybody who wanted to ask me questions could pull me aside on our breaks and as long as the question wasn't too personal, I'd answer it. I made that same offer to the pilots, Inflight, the mechanics and the ramp as well. It seems like during that first six weeks I had more honest one on one or group conversations with people than I'd had with folks in the previous six years I'd been employed there..

The funniest one was when I had one female co-worker trying to ascertain what my sexual orientation was and asked me if I asked me if I liked women. I brushed her question off by joking, "Yeah, I like women. I like women so much I want to be one." When that led to one of my gay male supervisors pulling me aside after a flight and asking it I was transitioning to become a lesbian, I quickly had to do damage control on that comment.

Another humorous moment was when the late Jerry Falwell made his infamous attack on Teletubbie Tinky-Winky. and every out GLBT pilot and flight attendant in the system responded by putting Tinky Winky key fobs on their roller bags.

There were also not so humorous moments. I flew to DCA in 1998 for my first lobby trip with Vanessa Edwards Foster traveling with me on a buddy pass. I was still in the process of getting my work records changed to reflect my new name and my company ID already had Monica on it. I was in a great mood because it was my first trip to DC and I was feeling good after being on the Hill for two days (before i found out we'd been sabotaged by HRC a year later).

The African-American gate agent I showed my ID to, when it was time for me to pick up our seats for the return trip to Houston embarrassed and angered me by using my old name on the PA in a crowded gate lounge, in effect outing me to the entire lobby. He ended up issuing a written apology to me a few days later when i wrote up the incident for my supervisor and his GM.

The same thing happened to me in LA in 1999. This one exposed me to some jerks on the flight walking by my aisle seat and repeatedly calling me 'faggot' as I was still fuming about not only being outed again, but this time being erroneously bumped off the 7 AM PDT LAX-IAH trip. I couldn't retaliate because I was in uniform and heading back to work when I arrived at IAH.

I also used my passes to check out GLBT venues in other cities. I hung out at Club Peanuts on Santa Monica Blvd at Club Peanuts one Tuesday night and ran into a few actors enjoying on the down low the company of the T-girls hanging out there. So I wasn't surprised by the news of a certain comedian being pulled over on that street with a T-girl in his vehicle.

There was one night I was in the Village with Dana Turner and we were talking about transgender related community business during a drag show at One Potato, Two Potato. The manager actually walked over to us and asked us to be quiet because we 'were disturbing the (lousy) drag performer on stage. Me and Dana did double takes, then she replied to the manager, "Since when did this become Lincoln mother----ing Center?"

One thing I do miss about my airline days besides the travel, the flexible schedule, the money and the other perks that go along with it is that every workday was different. One day you'd be checking in a celebrity or politician, the next some sweet senior citizen taking a trip to see her grandkids, a couple on their honeymoon.or a kid heading off to college or military boot camp.

We were a family, no matter if you worked in LAX, EWR, CLE, ORD, IAH or some outstation with four flights a day. You were also connected to other airline people internationally as well not only at your own carrier, but others worldwide. We had airlne specific softball, volleyball and basketball tournaments, 5 and 10K runs in various spots on the globe and picnics in various places. The world was basically your playground and with airline passes, you could see any concert, attend any sporting event and any conference no matter where it was held. All you had to do was trade for the days off.

Oh yeah, we also had some slammin' parties, too. Some airline peeps can drink and eat twice their weight in food and alcoholic beverages. I also noted the irony that as many hetero airline couples marriages were crumbling because of AIDS (Airline Induced Divorce Syndrome) the GLBT airline couples I knew had been together up to a decade or more.

But yeah, I do miss the airline industry and I'm saddened that it's going through another round of consolidation and contraction that's going to cost a lot of good people some very nice well paying jobs.

But mine was fun while it lasted.

Whatever Happened To My Old Friend....

When I had my monthly newspaper column in THE LETTER, I wrote one commentary that was published in April 2006 about my philosophy on friendships and how I treat them like marriages. As far as I'm concerned they are till death do you part, they are valuable, and they take just as much work, effort and open communication to sustain them and have them continue to flourish.

Most of the time I do a good job of staying in contact with old friends, but for others its been a challenge.

Mes Deux Cents has a recent post on her blog which talked about an old friend of hers from first grade that moved away and from time to time she thinks about her and wonders how her life turned out.

That got me thinking about some the peeps I was friends with BT (before transition) and AT (after transition) that were close at one point, and they either moved away, I did or we drifted apart.

While I was living in H-town I did find myself running into my classmates that stayed in Houston to either attend college or still lived there. Some, like my fifth grade classmate Clyde Drexler (yes, that Clyde Drexler) it was impossible not to know what they were up to and how their life turned out. Others it hasn't been as easy to get that information.

Some of the people I knew in earlier grades I got reunited with in high school or college. Others I would see in a news story, like my old junior high school classmate Vonda Higgins who became a HPD undercover officer and was shot and left paralyzed after a 1998 drug bust went horribly wrong for her and her partner. Other I heard about when they ran for public office, or were featured in news articles good and bad.

Mes Deux's post had me reminisicing about a girl named Stephanie King who was in my fifth grade class as well. I frequently found myself during my airline days being reunited with my classmates from grade school, junior high, high school and college. There was one time I was reunited with a girl I had a crush on in elementary school during my uncle's wedding in 1990. She was the wedding coordinator, and I discovered she worked at the airport for US Customs when I went to work a few days later. There were others I ran into at various clubs during the 80's and early 90's. My junior high classmate Kimberli I used to run into when I was accompanying my mother on one of her shoe shopping forays at Wholesale Shoe Warehouse. Some of those reunions became even more interesting after I transitioned.

When Stephanie's father's job transferred him to San Antonio, she ended up moving there just before our Christmas break. One day in 1989 between flights we'd been having one of those 'I wonder what my old classmate is doing' conversations in the breakroom and I excused myself to start working a San Antonio flight.

During a little down time in the flight I found myself wondering what happened to her when this beautiful tall, sister walked up to check in. She mentioned she was visiting relatives and old school friends in Houston. When I asked her what school, thinking she'd moved in high school, she mentioned she moved in fifth grade.

I remarked to her as I checked her in for the flight that I had a classmate who'd moved to San Antonio in fifth grade when I was at Frost Elementary. She raised an eyebrow for a moment, then called me by name. I glanced at the name of the passenger record on the computer screen in front of me. It was Stephanie. I didn't recognize her at first because she used to wear glasses in elementary school and the stylishly dressed sistah standing in front of me wasn't.

She and I exchanged phone numbers and we talked off and on for about two years before I lost track of her because I lost her phone number when I moved to my new apartment.

There are others I haven't seen since high school and in some cases junior high school. There are others I met during the early stages of my transition that I find myself thinking about as well. I find myself wondering how their lives turned out, and hope they are happy and healthy. I even find myself wondering about some of my old teachers as well at times. It's a major reason I don't miss a high school reunion and the big 30 year one for my class is coming up in 2010.

Well, if any of my old classmates, co-workers or friends happen to be surfing the Net and stumble across this post, hollar at me. As you can see by this blog and the number of posts I have on it, I have much to tell you.