THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Mary Pat Laffey
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg said I was very courageous.”
Active leader in her union and fought to become the first woman hired as a purser by Northwest Airlines. In 1970, she organized her fellow flight attendants to file a class action lawsuit to demand equal pay and treatment for women working as flight attendants and pursers at the airline. After more than a decade of appeals by Northwest, in 1984 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling in her favor.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, July 2025
Photo. Mary Pat Laffey, 1968.
More About Mary Pat:
- “Glamour, Travel, Sexism: When Flight Attendants Fought Back,” by Liza Weisstuch for the New York Times, February 2024
- Fly With Me; Meet The Women Who Changed The World While Flying It, February 2024
- Fly With Me; Documentary Explores the Lives of the Pioneering Women Flight Attendants Who Transformed the World While Flying It
- “Stewardess!” by Kira Obolensky, 2019. Set against the backdrop of the birth of feminism, this play tells the story of one woman’s fight over the span of 20 years to transform the lives of the women she works with by joining a union, taking legal actions and changing the consciousness of the men in the workplace.
- Mary Pat Laffey, et al., v. Northwest Airlines, Inc. US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Argued Dec. 8, 1983. Decided July 20, 1984