Attending Airline Attendant School Is Crucial For Employment
About an hour before takeoff, attendants are briefed on evacuation procedures, length of flight, weather conditions, and health issues having to do with passengers by the captain. They ensure that first-aid kits and emergency equipment are aboard, and that the cabin is in order. As passengers board, attendants greet them, instruct on where to store carry-on items, ask them to fasten seat-belts, and talk about use of electronic devices — these are safety issues.
Most of this data is on a CD as a 'canned' speech with words authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). These can vary from airline to airline; Southwest Airlines, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, may broadcast the FAA approved instructions but with a humorous twist while Delta Airlines, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, may be very serious.
Airlines operate twenty-four seven; airline attendants can work days, nights, splits, holidays, and weekends. This is usually dependant upon their union seniority. The AFA-CWA is a merger of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA.) This union most often determines the work schedule. Attendants can be scheduled up to 14 hours a day, international flights have a different criteria. FAA requires that attendants receive 9 hours of rest after each duty. Airlines usually guarantee a number of minimum hours of flight per month, somewhere around 80 hours. Attendants must be flexible and willing to relocate.
Airline attendants must be certified by the FAA. A high school diploma or its equivalent is the minimum educational requirement. Applicants who have a college degree are placed first for interviews and there is a new tendency towards related disciplines, such as communications, psychology, nursing, travel and tourism, hospitality, and education. For international airlines the applicant generally must be able to speak a foreign language fluently. To be FAA certified, airline attendants are required to successfully complete ancillary training requirements, such as aircraft evacuation, fire fighting, medical emergency, and security procedures
Once the applicant is hired, there is further training above the airline attendant school, ranging from 3 to 6 weeks. This is a familiarization of company policy, types of aircraft used, and relationships between the company, the employee, and the AFA-CWA union. There are other smaller unions, but the AFA-CWA is the largest airline union in the world.
Airline attendants hold about 98,700 jobs today. Commercial airlines employed the vast majority of airline attendants and most of these attendants live near major airports or major airline hub cities.
Employment of attendants is projected to grow about 8%. Even though being an airline attendant has gone from 'glamorous' to a skilled occupation with considerable schooling, competition for jobs is expected as there are more applicants than there are jobs. Attending an FAA certified airline attendant schools is crucial to employment.
