Cabin crew ensure plane passengers are comfortable, safe and happy as they sit through their flights. It’s a common misconception that flight attendant jobs are pretty easy. However, as with many jobs, there’s much more to the occupation than many people realise.
He told Express.co.uk that British Airways looked for crew with “bubbly personalities” and “cheerfulness.”
This helped the staff be good at the job and dealing with people – and also at having fun.
Marton explained cabin crew “are good at parties” as they let their hair down after the work is done.
“They are hired for their ability to burn the candle at both ends,” Marton said.
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“But interestingly enough, as a colleague of mine commented to a strict HR lady at BA: ‘You recruit cabin crew for their bubbly personalities and their cheerfulness, knowing that they are often able to burn the candle at both ends, but then you penalise them when they do?!’
Marton went into detail about the hardships of the job in his book. “For all the supposed glamour of being an airline employee,” he wrote, “the fact is that it can not only be an incredibly tiring job, but also a lonely and isolated one.
“What I have found, is that most men and women never admitted to that, almost as if they were too caught up in their preservation of the mystique for the watching world, even their colleagues.
“Fake smiles, make-up and deportment, are usually the veneers that cover the aching feeling within, that we would all rather be at home doing something ‘normal’ with our loved ones, or even just mundane, away from work.”
Heather Poole explained in her book Cruising Altitude: “Flight attendants are reluctant to call in sick for many reasons, the most important being that no one wants to get stuck on a layover far from home, especially when there are kids involved,” she wrote.
“Many of us will push it until we get where we need to be before putting our name on the sick list.”
Being ill can have serious repercussions which many crew are keen to avoid.
“Once on the [sick] list, an employee is not allowed to travel, not even as a passenger on another airline. An employee who does and gets caught is no longer employed,” Poole explained.
