“How is Hannah to share with? Mary was saying she kept coming into your room with a million questions about the exam but then she never listens in class and she’s always just so full on!”
“Yep…I want to swap rooms so bad, but I worry she’ll take in personally. I just can’t deal with her every day for another 6 weeks!”
When you first get the job as cabin crew, one of the first things you’ll be told is your start date for the next available ground school. For 7 weeks, you’ll learn everything there is to know about working a flight, and to officially graduate and earn your wings, you’ll need to pass every exam along the way.
Aside from passing the course content, you’ll also be assessed on how you interact with each other and any bad behaviour along the way and chances you’ll be evicted from the course. After all, you haven’t officially gotten the job until you’ve made it through ground school and someone is always watching. Much like Big Brother or America’s Next Top Model you’ll be thrown together with around 15 other new recruits, you’ll be eating together, living together, learning together, and sleeping together (well not actually hooking up – but it has happened) for the next 7 weeks. By the end of it, you’ll be bonded from one of the most intense and memorable experiences of you’re life to date. I always say to people the whole experience would make a great reality TV show, and when people ask what the flight attendant training is like, I often compare it to the Big Brother house. Here’s why:
Expect a Rollercoaster of Emotions
Just like the Big Brother contestants, during ground school you’re taken away from your family, and will be living in a different setting, spending hours on end with people you’ve only just met. Plus you need to pass the assessments in a pressure cooker environment. You’ll be stressed, you’ll be excited, tired, and feel like you’re living in the strangest bubble living in a hotel in a different city with a completely foreign routine. All this means a range of emotions. There’s be times you’re on cloud nine, and other times you’ll just want nothing more than to go home to the people that that you know and love.
Expect Conflict and Drama
With all this time spent together with a range different personalities, and it’s easy to see that just like those in a reality show there’s going to be fireworks. It’s safe to say you’re going to get quite sick of some fellow crewmembers at times and conflict is all but inevitable. It got to the stage during my first ground school where everyone was bitching about everyone, and we needed to call a group meeting to remind people to to be kinder to each other. In my training class, I was one of only 2 guys, and the other women were split between ‘the mums’ and ‘the young girls,’ mostly in their early 20s. It was great being a guy and a bit older to avoid most of the drama and allowed me to be social with both groups. While some of the conflict seems so trivial looking back now, at the time it when you are living in a bubble it involved some people trying to show others up in front the trainers, and some perceiving they were more superior. I have to admit at times the petty high school drama about not including certain people in a social activity was brutal, and don’t even get me started about the whole hotel room sharing situation and who was paired with who…
Expect Intruders
During my second ground school when I transferred to become international crew, myself and three others joined a new training course halfway, as we didn’t need to complete the full course as we were already ‘qualified,’ in much of the content. This meant that we were the ‘fresh meat’ in a class of 12 others who had already bonded over the previous four weeks. It was akin to being intruders coming in half way through a Big Brother series, and we needed to form relationships and suss out the social politics and dynamics of the group.
Expect Evictions and Someone Always Watching
Just like Big Brother himself, someone is always watching during training – even when class is out for the day. The trainers have eyes and ears everywhere and if word of bad behaviour gets out, chances are you’ll be kicked out. While it didn’t happen in my ground school, another group had a trainee who arrived severely hungover to his EPs course and was still under the influence. One of his fellow crewmembers had dobbed him in, and he was swiftly kicked out of the training school. His sleazy behaviour to others during the course also didn’t help his cause.
Expect Cliques and Competition, Challenges and Tests
“Why does she do her hair like that?”
“What did you get on your exam? I got 100 per cent! So happy!”
Just like many reality TV shows, recruits or contestants need to pass some sort of test to stay in the game (course) and, with a job offer up for grabs, the stakes are definitely high. The difference is, in ground school, there’s not just one winner and everyone is equal. That’s why I had to remind others that it didn’t matter who got a better score on an exam as long as we passed. We were there to support each through the course to earn our wings. There’s no doubt though, that there is a lot of sizing each other up that went on during training as others compared themselves. It was for nothing though as we had been already chosen through the recruitment process so weren’t in competition with each other.
Expect Friends for Life
“I’ve got my next flight with Jeremy, I’m so excited to work together – we haven’t seen each other since training. We’ve got all this stuff planned to do in Hong Kong!”
Through all the drama, stress and intensity of flight attendant training, when it’s all over your fellow ground school class will end up becoming akin to family. When you are out online as qualified flight attendants you’ll always get a warm feeling when you see one of your original training class is on your crew list.
Such an intense experience together leaves you bonded, and even those who you didn’t necessarily get along with during training, you’ll find you are quite fond of. Some of the best friends I have made have come out of my ground schools and I wouldn’t change the experience for anything. Training to be a flightie is like nothing else – (except maybe being in a reality TV program) but thankfully, without the cameras!
