FORMER flight attendants have revealed the strict rules they must follow at work – including being a certain weight.
The ex-Emirates staff said they had to stick to a rigid grooming regime and would be punished by the ‘weight police’ if they were deemed too heavy.
3
The cabin crew explained that Emirates has an “Appearance Management Programme” dedicated to making sure flight attendants look the part.
Karla Bayson, 36, said image and uniform rules were strict, including neat hair, nail polish that was red, neutral or clear, and no visible tattoos.
Karla, who worked at Emirates for nine years before leaving in 2021, said she had seen some of her colleagues receive warnings about their weight.
She told Insider that staff deemed overweight were given two weeks to “lose it”, and every fortnight they’d be “checked again”, on the condition that they had to lose weight to keep working.
She also said that expectant mothers had to sign a contract before going onto maternity leave agreeing they would lose pregnancy weight before they returned to work.
Former flight attendant Maya Dukaric revealed that overweight flight attendants could be sacked if they don’t lose weight within a certain time frame.
She said: “If you don’t lose in that exact period of time, you can lose your job.
“You’re always under the stress of pressure because you always think you need to be perfect.”
Maya said that “weight police” would walk through the airport and stop crew they thought had gained weight and say: “Hey babe. You need to slow it down.”
A HR business partner at Emirates, who wished to remain anonymous, said there was a ruthless culture of dobbing each other in for weight gain.
3
They said: “A culture of telling on each other to management is prevalent.”
They said that failure to lose weight would be punished with warnings, weight checks and pay cuts.
And a former Emirates manager revealed that roughly 150 flight attendants out of 25,000 would be on the Appearance Management Programme at any one time.
The latest claims from the former flight attendants come just months after another Emirates cabin crew member said she quit her job after she had three years of weight checks.
Duygu Karaman, 37, said she was regularly prevented from boarding a flight and put on some scales to see if she’d shed some pounds.
The last three years of her decade at Emirates were spent having her BMI tracked and her body monitored, Duygu claimed.
She told The Mirror: “It’s definitely not okay. I was really upset for so long and then I lost my self-confidence.
“Emirates is really strict with their grooming policy. You never see an old cabin crew. They want pretty looking people.”
“I’d get my weight checked unannounced before flights. I had to go into the weight room and be checked. I tried to keep it at that weight, but sometimes I would gain one or two kilos.
“I was so upset. When they caught me on the weight checks I had to go back to zero months, and you have to remain clear for a year to be let go.”
After 10 years in the job, the persistent weighing and body critique prompted Duygu to quit.
A flight attendant has revealed the very specific height and weight cabin crew need to be to land the job – would you make the cut?
Cabin crew have revealed secrets you really want to know – like who they’d save first in an emergency.
A flight attendant has revealed the one thing that passengers should never ask them during boarding.
3
