Shari Schlaman said had just gotten back home to Santa Clarita earlier this week from her 24-hour trip to Rome, Italy. The quick turnaround? That’s because she is a flight attendant at United Airlines and has been since June 8, 1986.
Schlaman recently celebrated 40 years of flying and she’s seen a lot of change in that time: She said she remembers the times that smoking was allowed on planes, the 9/11 attacks, and traveling during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Schlaman recalled getting the acceptance letter of getting the job on her 25th birthday.
“This letter had come to my house, and my mom, I don’t know how my mom figured out that it was the acceptance letter, but she wrapped it up in a box of envelopes and gave me that for a gift,” Schlaman said. “And then I unwrapped it, and I was like, ‘What is this? A box of envelopes. How weird?’ And she’s like, ‘Don’t look through it.’ And then I found the letter from United, and it was like ‘Congratulations. You’ve been hired.’”
When asked if this was always the career path she wanted, Schlaman said she remembered taking an aptitude test as a third or fourth grader that her mother provided, choosing a flight attendant as one of her top three choices. However, she said she did not remember putting that down as one of her choices.
“I had a whole different thing going. I went to, I grew up in Florida. I went to college. I was a (public relations) and communications major, and I was going to do all that,” Schlaman said.
Schlaman said she was in a musical group called Up with People, and touring around the world with them sparked her love of travel – eventually telling her parents that she wanted to explore the world.
“So, I started applying to cruise ships. I thought I was going to be like Julie (McCoy) from ‘The Love Boat,’ and I did apply to all these airlines, and now all of them are out of business … And United was one of them that I did apply to,” Schlaman said. “It was actually my last choice, because they were in Chicago, and I thought that was too far away to go from Florida. But I applied there, and the rest is history, so here we are.”
When reflecting on what has changed in airports and flying, Schlaman said in earlier years she would be on reserve sometimes, but it would be challenging since she did not have a cell phone.
“They could call me at any time and say, ‘Hey, you’re covering for somebody that was sick. You’re going to wherever.’ You would have a little pager, and the pager would go off, and then you would literally have to go find a pay phone if you were out, or go back to your house,” Schlaman said.
She added that safety protocols have changed a lot as well. Schlaman recalled being able to walk through the airport, flashing her badge and not having to go through a screening like travelers do now.
During the pandemic, she said she was off for about 19 months. However, when she returned, she had to wear a mask.
Schlaman said her earliest memory of her job was when she stayed in her own hotel room.
“Going in the room and closing the door and going, ‘Wow, I’ve never been in a hotel by myself.’ It was usually that I traveled with my family or when I was married, I traveled with my husband, but it was just strange, like, ‘OK, that’s part of this job,’” Schlaman said.
She added that one tip she tells herself while she works to adjust to the constant time change is – “wherever you are, wherever you land, that is what time it is.”
“So, when I land, and it’s 1 o’clock in the afternoon in Rome, but it’s really, like, 4 o’clock in the morning for me back here. I say, ‘Nope, it’s 1 o’clock in the afternoon. I’m going to take a shower, go have lunch, or whatever.’ And I stay on the time zone immediately when I get there, and same when I come back,” Schlaman said. “I come back home and I don’t come back and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s 11 at night in Rome, but it’s really 7 a.m. in California.’ I just immediately go back to the time zone.”
When asked what her favorite place is to visit, Schlaman said New Zealand. She said she loves the people because they are so friendly and that they have “everything.”
Her daughter, Claire, has followed in her mother’s footsteps and is now a flight attendant in Denver.
“She mostly, because she’s (a) junior, mostly does domestic flights. And same with when I started … three or four or five, what they call legs a day. So maybe I would go start in Chicago, but then I’d go to like Seattle, and then I’d go down to (Los Angeles), and then I’d end up in San Diego or something, and it was just flight after flight after flight,” Schlaman recalls when she first started.
Schlaman said that she has already traveled on 82 flights in 2026 – most of them being internationally.
