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    The Flight Attendant Career Guide- Post Covid Edition
    The Flight Attendant Career Guide- Post Covid Edition
    The Flight Attendant Career Guide- Post Covid Edition
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    The Flight Attendant Career Guide- Post Covid Edition

    By Tim Kirkwood

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    About this ebook

    For over 30 years, this has been the complete guide to the Flight Attendant career for US and Canadian applicants. Explains in depth the differences between Commercial, Charter, Corporate and Private Jet flying. Contains chapters on Flight Attendant history, Applying and Interviewing, Training, Flying for a Foreign Airline, and a Typical 3-Day trip, and working as a Corporate/Private Flight Attendant.
    Also included the hiring requirements for over 70 US and Canadian airlines, including minimum age  and domiciles. Each airline listing also included the application  website link to apply for employment.
    Includes reference links for both Commercial and Corporate flying, airport codes, and recommended reading lists.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTim Kirkwood
    Release dateJul 19, 2024
    ISBN9780963730107
    The Flight Attendant Career Guide- Post Covid Edition
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    Author

    Tim Kirkwood

    Tim Kirkwood has been a commercial Flight Attendant for a Major Airline for over 40 years. For 20 of those years he has been the author/publisher of THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT CAREER GUIDE, and THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT JOB FINDER & CAREER GUIDE. Tim has also been involved with aviation employment since 1992, and is President of AviaNation.com- the on-line website of aviation job postings in all job categories from around the world. Women in Corporate Aviation (www.wca-intl.org) has chosen Tim as their Executive Director. WCA is a non-profit offering networking, mentoring and scholarships for men and women in the pursuit of a career in Corporate and Private Aviation

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      Book preview

      The Flight Attendant Career Guide- Post Covid Edition - Tim Kirkwood

      DEDICATION

      In this, the 97th anniversary of the first airplane flight with working flight attendants, the Flight Attendant Career Guide is dedicated to all those in the airline industry who have fought so long and so hard, and endured strikes, labor disputes, economic downturns, terror attacks, global pandemics and heightened security, and put the pro in professional.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I would like to thank the people who made this book possible. Special thanks go to the professionals at the In–Flight and Human Resources departments of the airlines for their invaluable assistance, and to the flight attendants who contributed their ideas and views.

      Special thanks go to Helen McLaughlin for her wonderful book Footsteps in the Sky and her remarkable assistance; to Vicky Morris Young’s help with the historic aspects of this career, and to Georgia Panter–Nielson for all the background information she supplied for the chapter on flight attendant unions. I am also indebted to Susan Friedenberg for her tireless assistance with the chapter on corporate flight attendants, and for allowing me to learn from and use her copyrighted training materials, as well as Scott Arnold from Sajet Solutions for additional corporate details.

      And heartfelt gratitude to my publisher of the 2nd and 3rd edition of my Guide, Daniel Lauber, for his continued support and dedication to keeping my dream alive.

      — Tim Kirkwood

      USING THIS GUIDE

      Both the flight attendant profession and its job application process are like no other. The Flight Attendant Career Guide seeks to escort you through the complex and often perplexing process of getting hired as a flight attendant by the airline of your choice. You would be very prudent to read this guide from the beginning before you examine the airline listings in Chapter 25. You will need to fully understand the nature of the job and career, as well as the application and interviewing process, before you start selecting the airlines for which you want to work.

      By using this guide, you will be able to concentrate on the airlines that meet your requirements or preferences for both your job, and your career. For the airlines to which you apply, this book helps bring to the interviewing process candidates for employment who are knowledgeable and well–prepared for the position.

      Every effort has gone into structuring this book to make it easy to find the information you seek. To avoid needlessly killing more trees, we have created this 5th edition as an e-book.

      The information contained in this guide has been gathered from flight attendants and the Human Re- sources and In–Flight Personnel departments of the airlines. The author has done everything possible to ensure its accuracy and timeliness. But information changes rapidly in the airline industry. This guide will help your efforts to launch or advance your flight attendant career. But like all other career books, it cannot guarantee you will get hired. It does, however, give you all the information and tools you need to find job openings for flight attendants and successfully navigate the unusual hiring process for this unique job.

      INTRODUCTION

      You’ve seen them in the movies: flying to exotic and faraway places, spending luxurious days in Paris and Rome, indulging the every whim of their wealthy, attractive (and single!) first–class passengers before they jet back to their smartly furnished apartments in Midtown Manhattan or Western Vancouver. The passengers on their flights are all happy, calm, and very sophisticated — and the crews always have plenty of time to chat with each and every passenger. The airplanes that carry them are spacious and comfortable, with aisles so wide you could drive a truck down them. And the Flight Attendants all look like models from the pages of Vogue and GQ. How could you not want to be a Flight Attendant?

      Real life is much different than the movies — a fact you must accept before you even consider starting the challenging application process to become a flight attendant. While the above scenario may have been somewhat true during the height of the industry in the sixties and seventies, airline deregulation and economic downturns have vastly altered the industry. Prior to deregulation, the Government set airline fares and routes, which made the system fair for all airlines, regardless of size. The abolition of those regulations in 1978 freed airlines to set fares and routes at whatever the market would bear. In addition, the events of September 11, 2001, as well as the Covid-19 Pandemic, have been the turning point of a new phase of the airline industry — the results of which still are being worked out. More than ever before, survival of the fittest and maximizing profits are the airline industry’s mantras. Dollars and cents control most management decisions, which has led airlines to cut costs wherever they can.

      Maximizing productive crew utilization has become the standard in the airline industry. For Flight Attendants this approach translates into more work and longer hours for the same or even lower wages. The Flight Attendant Career Guide escorts you through the real world that daily greets every flight attendant. It helps you answer the questions, Am I right for this career, and is this career right for me?

      Chapter 1

      HISTORY OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS

      Back in the 1920s and 1930s, Postmasters General Brown and Farley established the network of U.S. airways after Congress assigned them the power to consolidate air mail routes in the best interest of the American public. At first, only mail was flown, but gradually passenger traffic started to build. In 1922, Daimler Airways of Britain did something remarkable: It hired the world’s first airplane stewards. Undoubtedly hired because of their small stature, cabin boys reportedly did not serve any refreshments but offered passengers general assistance and reassurance.

      Couriers — that’s what the first flight attendants were called in the United States. Their ranks included the young sons of the steamship, railroad, and industrial magnates who financed the airlines. In 1926, Stout Air Services of Detroit became the first U.S. airline to employ male aerial couriers, working on Ford Tri–Mo- tor planes between Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Stout became part of the United Airlines conglomerate in 1929.

      Then Western (1928), and Pan Am (1929) were the next U.S. carriers to employ stewards to serve food. Pan American steward Joey Carrera recalls how the crew would lug  along  several days’ worth of food because nothing edible could be found at their stopover points. In the early flying boats, the so–called galley was in the tail of the plane, and could be reached only by crawling on hands and knees through a low, narrow passageway. Returning to the passenger cabin while balancing food and drink took genuine skill. Stewards also  worked on the ten-passenger Fokkers in the Caribbean, as gamblers traveled between Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba.

      During the early days of commercial aviation, a pilot or first officer would often leave the cockpit to serve as a cabin attendant — helping serve the passengers in addition to helping fly the planes. But this splitting of duties proved inefficient, so airlines began to consider other options.

      Boeing Air Transport (BAT), a forerunner of United Air Lines, was the first airline to hire women. Registered nurse Ellen Church convinced Steven A. Stimpson, then District Traffic Manager for BAT, to consider using women as flight attendants. BAT’s executives allowed Mr. Stimpson to conduct a three–month trial of women flight attendants, hiring Ms. Church as Chief Stewardess supervising seven other nurses. On May 15, 1930, the world’s Original Eight stewardesses flew for the first time.

      Airline executives believed the presence of a female attendant on board would reassure passengers of the increasing safety of air travel. They thought it would be difficult for potential travelers to admit their fear of flying when young women were part of the in–flight crew. They also believed that women would cater to their predominately male passengers. They were right on target. By the end of the three–month trial, passenger bookings were steadily increasing and male passengers were arranging to fly on specific flights with their favorite stewardess. Not everyone was enthusiastic about the idea of female attendants, though. Pilots claimed they were too busy flying

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