Becoming a flight attendant involves meeting physical, legal, and educational requirements, as well as completing an intensive training course. Applicants must meet height and fitness requirements, be legal residents of the airline’s country, and have completed high school. Training courses last around five weeks and cover safety instructions, customer service, and emergency procedures.
If you’re looking for a career that combines frequent travel with customer service, you might want to become a flight attendant. This type of airline employee, sometimes also called a stewardess, stewardess or cabin crew member, is responsible for looking after the safety and comfort of passengers on the flight. While the steps required to become a stewardess vary from airline to airline, the process generally involves meeting preliminary physical, legal, and educational requirements, as well as completing an intensive course of training.
To ensure flight attendant applicants are physically suitable for the job, most airlines require applicants to meet three preliminary qualifications. First, you must stay within a height range of approximately 64 inches (163 cm) to 72 inches (183 cm). This ensures that you will be able to easily reach overhead compartments and also be able to stand and move comfortably through airplane cabins. Second, you must demonstrate a level of fitness that will allow you to meet the physical demands of the job, from lifting luggage and pushing food carts to opening heavy exit windows in emergency situations. Third, you must be at least 18 years old, although many airlines have a minimum age requirement of 21 years old.
Another consideration when applying to become a flight attendant is your legal eligibility for the job. In most cases, flight attendants must be legal residents of the country in which your airline is headquartered. If your airline offers international service, you will need a valid passport.
Typically, successful applicants for flight attendants must have completed high school or passed an equivalency exam. As the position requires a high level of interaction with passengers, previous customer service experience can bolster your application. As cabin crew are likely to encounter passengers from many different countries, knowledge of one or more foreign languages can also increase your convenience. Additionally, the job requires the ability to respond to medical emergencies; thus, prior first aid training can further strengthen your candidacy.
Even if you have fulfilled these preliminary qualifications, you must normally complete a formal training course, usually administered by the contracted airline, before becoming a flight attendant. Here, airline contracting policies may vary. Some require completion of a training program before a candidate can be hired. Others hire untrained candidates on an internship basis, upgrading them to full employment when training is successfully completed.
These training courses, which generally last around five weeks, prepare candidates for the full range of stewardess duties. You will learn to perform normal stewardess duties such as serving drinks and meals. In addition, you’ll receive training to help a wide range of passengers – young or disabled travelers, for example, or nervous passengers – in a friendly and efficient manner.
Perhaps the most important element of flight attendant training is safety instruction. As a cabin crew member, you are responsible for keeping passengers safe. Therefore, you must be prepared to respond calmly, quickly and appropriately to unexpected situations, from a choking passenger to a crashing plane. You must be able to communicate and instruct your passengers efficiently and administer basic first aid treatments. In an emergency, you must also be able to perform established crisis procedures, deploy necessary appliances such as life rafts, and assist passengers in operating breathing and flotation devices.
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