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On The Job

Working as a flight attendant is a different experience than most realise. It’s not always the glamour that people might assume between the destinations and the fancy hotels. Customer service comes first and the range of people and situations that you encounter means that every day is different.

Dealing with a range of cultures and passenger types from first time and frequent flyers, working with captains and the other crew, crew training, with a lot of different personalities of other crew, this is what doing the job of a flight attendant really looks like

Why Flight Attendant Training is Like Living in the Big Brother House

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“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.

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Why I’m Proud to Work as a Flight Attendant

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“I’m just a flight attendant”

I’ve heard this answer from crew when being asked what they do. In fact I regret that I’ve even said the ‘just’ word myself on the odd occasion. Flight attendant jobs are among the more visible jobs to the public (after all passengers often have not much else to do in the air but watch us) and many of them think they have our jobs all figured out. “Glorified waitresses” is a term used to describe us maddeningly often. And the fact that crew may revert to saying ‘just a flight attendant’ indicated they may not see the value in what they do or consider their job very important.

I have to confess – sometimes I wonder the same thing. Is there something more valuable I could be doing than pushing a cart up the aisle in the middle of the night? Maybe. But at the same time I don’t have to think very hard for reasons I’m proud to be a wing bearer and part of the crew community.

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THE RED EYE RUNDOWN: What It’s Really Like to Work Overnight Flights

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“She said she hates working overnights and she said she doesn’t know if she can do it anymore”

“I was thinking, honey, maybe its time you look for another job or do domestic flights… You’re always going to be doing these back of the clock flights as long as you are flying internationally.”

Red eye flights are a fact of life for most cabin crew, especially those who work internationally. Essentially a red eye means that you leave for duty in the evening and arrive to your destination (home base or slip port) the next morning. As international crew, for my airline, every flight home I operate is a red eye, usually from Asia.

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