YOUNG AIR HOSTESS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 104, 12 February 1940, Page 3

YOUNG AIR HOSTESS.

AN ALTERED EUROPEAN MAP. An Australian girl who has seen moie of Europe than most Europeans is Miss Laurie Steele, of Sydney, who, after a year as hostess with Australian National Airways, was signed on by the K.L.M. Line 14 months ago. Since then she has visited every country in Europe, except Russia and Spain, but it is a strangelyaltered European map that she looks down on from the K.L.M.’s big luxury i aeroplanes. Miss Steele, who has' the distinction of being the first and only British woman among the K.L.M. air hostesses, was sent to a three months’ specialised course when she first arrived in Amsterdam to take tip her work 14 months ago. The course ranged from the Customs regulations in all the European •countries to the rates of exchange; from the geography of Europe to the air and rail time-tables, and a knowledge of the leading hotels, restaurants, and night clubs in the cities served by the. K.L.M. In addition she had to perfect the Dutch she had started learning before leaving Australia and acquire German and French as well. Her first assignment was to the Amsterdam-Croydon run, then she transferred to the Paris and later to the Milan and Budapest lines. Since the war the services have been operating in narrow “corridors” carefully plotted, but now only two runs are being maintained, and the famous Seliipoli airport in Amsterdam is sadly altered, with most of its big machines idle in the hangars and its ground stall in military uniform. Miss Steele has recently been to England completing plans for joining up with the Women’s Royal Navy Service —if Holland’s fear materialises and the Germans turn her inio a high road.