career air hostess

MAS cabin crew

Career as air hostess is a dream of millions of young men and women. You may ask, what is so great of working as a air hostess. Most of them will say the travel and the adventure.

It is an exciting life, but do not be deceived. It is also involved the hard works.Let us talk about the hard works first:

a. Long hours on standing and walking. Have you ever notice that these charming young girls have to stand up walking and serving the passengers for 13 hours, yes, that is the duration from kuala lumpur or singapore to London, direct. Imagine you are doing it and you need to keep pretty and maintain your smile.

Some of the passengers, do not appreciate them. Some are demanding and expecting too much, but luckily the majority of the passengers are appreciative.

b. The continuous odd hours.    For a flight departing at 6 in the morning, 0600 hours, you have to be at the airport at 0400hrs, if it takes one hour to reach airport, then you depart from home at 0300hrs. That man you wake up at 0200hrs in the morning. Then you work for 13 hours, another hour to clear the airport and next hour to reach the hotel.
So you are going for 1hr getting ready + 1 hr to the airport + 2 hrs before flight + 13 hrs flight + 1 hr to clear the airport + 1 hr to the hotel = 19 hrs.
I had not seen anything longer, the worst so far that break the Malaysia Record is for trainee doctors who work for 36 hrs.

c. Low pay. As compared to the others in the airline industry, the air hostess pay is low. It is made up by the allowances, they get about USD70/ for each night away from the home base.

d. Limited progression: If you look at the possible promotion path, it is rather limited, It is like silo and you cannot move sideways to another departments. Moreover like pilot, the work is very structured and rather difficult to display outstanding performance.

GOOD POINTS... YES THERE ARE MANY TOO..

a. Travel - when asked, majority of those who came for the interview will quote this as the main reason. A ticket from Singapore to London will cost more than S$1000/ and the crew will be free. It is not only free but they are paid to stay in London. How nice will it be.

b. Paid benefits - although I mentioned that the pay is rather low, but they gain in other areas. The clothings are free and the company pay for the laundry. The travel to work is free, the hotel they stay are free and they get about S$100 per night if they stay away from base.
So they paid benefits are normally more then their salary.

c. Meeting people - the crew will have plenty of chance to meet new people. Of course some may not be too nice but the majority are nice people.

d. To to do shopping - girls like shopping, then London Oxford street is waiting for you.