Flight Attendants

Have you ever heard of these people? Have you ever seen them? Obviously! These people are called flight attendants or stewards, generally, air hosts or air hostesses. Today my article will be on these people, people who work in the sky.

As you have heard they are the people who take the responsibility of passenger safety whenever the passengers are on-board. Both males and females work as flight attendants. Their main duty is to secure the passenger safety. Serving passengers in a pleasant way is also a main duty. Promoting the airline they are working to can also be taken as an extra duty of a flight attendant.

The way the flight attendants are selected differs with the airline company. Almost all the airline companies prefer people with pleasant appearances to appoint as flight attendants. Generally it is considered that the applicant should be more than 5’’ in height as they have to handle baggage and safety instruments which are kept in upper places. Some airline companies only appoint people in the same nationality, that of the airline. As an example, our national airline, Srilankan Airlines only take srilankans as flight attendants. But the airlines such as Qatar airlines and Emirates appoint any nationality. That’s why we can find srilankans as flight attendants in those airlines.

Selected applicants, for the post of flight attendant are provided with an excellent training. But the training differs with the aircraft type as the safety instrument handling changes with it. Therefore each and every selected applicant is not provided the same training. They are given a training based on safety instruments, first aid, dangerous goods and passenger controlling which is subjected to be changed with the aircraft type. After the training period their progress report is sent to the civil aviation authority of the country. There they are awarded with a certificate which is valid only for 5 years. At the end of the 5 years they have to renew their certificate. During that period, if they have followed some other training based on some other aircraft, it too will be stated at the certificate renewal.

Most of the airline companies consider an age limit when selecting applicants for the post of flight attendant.

In Sri Lanka the minimum number of flight attendants employed at an aircraft should be equal to the number of doors in the aircraft. That means, if it’s an A340, it has 8 doors, therefore there must be a minimum number of 8 flight attendants. But in European countries it’s one flight attendant for 50 passengers.