USA Today Staff Affronted : ‘Neanderthal,’ Neuharth Told on ‘Sky Girls’ Plea

Today’s edition of USA Today carried a letter signed by more than 175 of the newspaper’s 426 newsroom employees, saying they were “offended, outraged and embarrassed” by USA Today founder Al Neuharth’s suggestion that airlines should make the skies friendlier by bringing back shapely, young “sky girls.”

The newspaper also carried an interview with the head of the Assn. of Flight Attendants, who said union members were “stunned” by the former Gannett Co. Inc. chairman’s comments.

“My feeling was that Al Neuharth is either a Neanderthal or some sort of court jester,” said Susan Bianchi-Sand, 42, who added that she has been a flight attendant for 20 years.

In a column last Friday, Neuharth said he began taking commercial flights for the first time in 19 years after his recent retirement, and did not like what he found.

“Many of the young, attractive, enthusiastic female flight attendants--then called stewardesses--have been replaced by aging women who are tired of their jobs or by flighty young men who have trouble balancing a cup of coffee or tea,” he wrote.

If he were running an airline, Neuharth said he would “ease today’s cabin pressures” for passengers by insisting on old-fashioned vital statistics for “sky girls”: unmarried female nurses, under age 25, measuring 5-foot-4 or less and weighing under 115 pounds.

“We say this is bigoted and insulting--not only to flight attendants and nurses, but also to the women and men who work for Gannett,” the employee letter said.