Crew who fly for their childhood airline: the ones who grew up on the national carrier, the family who worked there and the day you put on the uniform

Georgian Airways, Tbilisi, and I said in the small carriers thread that my mother worked for the airline. This is the thread for the crew whose airline was the airline of their childhood: the national carrier whose uniform you watched at the airport at six, whose crew were your parents' friends, and whose uniform you now wear. Every national carrier has these crew and nobody has asked them.

My version

My mother was Georgian Airways ground staff for 25 years and I grew up in the Tbilisi airport terminal, watching the crews board and the aircraft leave for Frankfurt and Paris and Moscow when it flew. The crew knew me by name at eight. I applied at 21 without telling her and told her at the assessment, which she was running the desk for. She did not cry until the wings.

The others I know

The Aeroméxico crew member whose father was a captain and who flew her first flight with him on the flight deck. The Kenya Airways crew whose aunt was a purser in the nineties and whose uniform photograph is on her wall. The Turkish Airlines crew who grew up in the THY housing in Istanbul because both parents flew. The MEA crew whose grandfather flew the Comets. The Qantas crew whose mother was one of the first female pursers and who trained her daughter's recurrent. Every national carrier has a crew room with these stories.

What it is like

The uniform is heavier. The airline's crises are family history, not news. The old crew remember you as a child and treat you as one for a year. The pride is inherited and it is specific: you are not flying for an airline, you are flying for the one your family built. And the expectation is heavier too: the child of the purser is expected to be good, and the whole crew room knows whose child you are.

The day you put on the uniform

Every one of us has it. The first time in the uniform you watched as a child, in the terminal you grew up in, with the crew who knew you at eight. The Aeroméxico crew member said her father did not speak for the whole first sector. My mother ran the desk at my assessment and did not cry until the wings, as I said, and then did not stop.

For the crew who are the first in their family

You have something we do not: the airline is yours to discover and not to inherit. The crew who grew up in the terminal know every rule and its story. The crew who arrived new see the airline as it is. Both are good crew. The inheritors carry the past and the new ones carry the future, and the crew room needs both.

For the inheritors

Post your version. The airline of your childhood, the family who worked there, the day in the uniform. The national carriers are families and the forum should know it.