The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
theatlantic.com
The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
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Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#2So who else thinks Richard Branson read this and sees opportunity for Virgin Air?
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#3[deleted]
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#4I would be interested to see what makes the Asian airlines different... it seems as though flight attendants there are usually younger and quite attractive.
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#5I would be interested to see what makes the Asian airlines different... it seems as though flight attendants there are usually younger and quite attractive.
I think the article exactly explains it's less labor laws and unions?
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#6[deleted]
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#7I would be interested to see what makes the Asian airlines different... it seems as though flight attendants there are usually younger and quite attractive.
I think the article exactly explains it's less labor laws and unions?
"It's because the domestic labor market lets them get away with it, and ours doesn't."
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#8Incidentally, can anyone else believe that the American airlines let these unions happen to them? They can't even promote employees for good performance anymore; there is only one criteria that employees are evaluated on, and that's time in that job at that airline. Change jobs and you're back at the bottom. Change airlines, and you're at the bottom.
The end result is that the flight attendants that choose the "best" routes (longhaul international) are the ones that care least about their job: they're at the top and they don't need to do a good job to stay there. Ironically, that's where the money is spent, and the people spending that money therefore get worse service. It's no surprise that anyone who pays for their own flights chooses the Asian or European airlines.
(My experience flying international first class on AA is that it's barely worth the taxes on the free flight. OTOH, when my company paid $10,000 for a flight to Singapore on Cathay Pacific, it was worth every penny.)
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#9While the current "un-hotness" of flight attendants might be union driven, I'm fairly certain there's another dynamic that would kick in if unions go away: It's simply bad business to fire/not hire good employees because they don't live up to a certain aesthetic. As the first analysis notes, people probably aren't willing to pay much, if anything at all, for hotness, while competence might be valuable.
Re: The Declining Hotness of Flight Attendants
#10Incidentally, can anyone else believe that the American airlines let these unions happen to them? They can't even promote employees for good performance anymore; there is only one criteria that employees are evaluated on, and that's time in that job at that airline. Change jobs and you're back at the bottom. Change airlines, and you're at the bottom. The end result is that the flight attendants that choose the "best"…
My understanding is that the "best routes" are not necessarily international routes; they are routes that offer the most paid hours per hour spent at work.
Cabin crew only get paid from the cabin door closing to the cabin door opening. Therefore longer routes tend to be better because messing around on the ground is roughly constant no matter how long the flight, so the longer the flight the more paid hours there are per 'free' ground hour.
However there are several factors fighting this:
- Layover time in a foreign city. Some destinations have bad flight schedules so you might end up with a long unpaid layover.
- After a few years of layovers in Paris it probably doesn't seem as exciting anymore so you aren't as willing to satisfy time at home for it.
- Domestic flights (especially on smaller planes) take less time to fill up, so crew can arrive closer to 'cabin door closed' time.
- Not all cabin crew live near an international departure airport, and they don't get paid to commute. Also they don't get put in first class when flying as a NONREV anymore thanks to free elite upgrades.
Therefore it varies by airline but some domestic or short routes may get very senior staff because they happen to match up with personal schedules, and some international cities will get junior staff because the schedule or paid-vs-free hours ratio is bad.