Academic literature on the topic 'Flight attendants'

In service organizations such as airlines, flight attendants as one of the components that play a direct role in serving the needs of passengers during flights are required to work independently without supervision and have confidence in carrying out job demands since they are accepted as employees. The agreement formed between the flight attendant and the airline is the initial motivation and trust given by the airline to flight attendants as employees known as psychological contracts. A high psychological contract with a reciprocal relationship where the flight attendant's expectations are fulfilled by the airline will make the flight attendant feel valued for her work and empowered. This feeling raises the motivation of flight attendants as employees to be more active by showing OCB. OCB is the behavior of flight attendants as individuals voluntarily outside of their formal job descriptions to support the advancement of the airline where they work. In this article, psychological contracts are an important factor in the growth of OCB in flight attendants, such as arriving to work early, helping coworkers or new employees who are experiencing difficulties, and contributing more to activities organized by airlines.

The number of business interests nowadays, many people use flight services to reach distant areas and must be traveled by very complex flight services. Such conditions have resulted in a large number of airlines requiring flight attendants to service their passengers on the plane. So that the right method is needed to carry out the selection process for flight attendants, the ELECTRE method is one solution that can be done for the flight attendant's selection process. The results obtained from the selection process of flight attendants without a score, because they have used the elimination process through threshold concordance and threshold discordance as follows, out of nine candidates for flight attendants who have passed the selection are flight attendants-3, flight attendants-6 and flight attendants-7, while others are not acceptable. So that through the results of the selection that has been done with the collaboratin AHP and ELECTRE method, by seeing the results obtained from aggregate matrices dominant.

The flight attendant profession is dominated by women, which may lead to the notion that this profession is one of the few in which women are not experiencing gender discrimination. However, research findings have shown that over time, feminization leads to a decline in status and remuneration, and thus must be understood and monitored because it may be camouflaging the continuous reality of gender inequity. This paper revisits the issue of gender stereotypes in flight attendants given new views of what makes for effective flight attendance. The work of flight attendants has been long regarded as ‘women’s work’, focusing on performing a commercialized version of the caring and service activities carried out for centuries in the domestication of women. Some images of female cabin crew in the past have included: nurse, mother, and sexual objects. Though major changes have occurred in the Western airline industry in the 1970s, Asian airlines, however, still enforce such restrictions as height, weight, age, and beauty on their female cabin crew members. Three Indonesian flight attendants from major Asian airlines were interviewed to analyze their perceptions of their profession and how they think Indonesia society views them. A survey was also conducted on 100 Indonesians to analyze their perception on the identity of flight attendants. Interview results show that while, flight attendants believe that Indonesian society still cling on to the old images of flight attendants as air hostesses who are often regarded as sex objects, whereas survey results actually show that this image has changed.

The rapid growth in civil aviation operations in recent years has raised expectations from flight attendants. Their duties have been intensified, and flight attendants have become subject to physical and mental fatigue due to irregular sleep, inadequate rest time, and long working hours. This study investigates the causes and effects of fatigue among flight attendants of a Turkish airline company through a self-administrated questionnaire. The survey is run online by 152 flight attendants. The results show that flight attendants have trouble falling asleep before flight duty. Before night flights and during layovers, the sleep duration is dramatically low. The results also reveal that factors related to scheduling, i.e., long duty days, night flights, and consecutive working days, play an essential role in fatigue. Thus, airline companies should revise their scheduling practices. In balancing work and social life, men struggle more than women, and married flight attendants have more difficulty than single ones. The findings provide valuable insights for airline companies and policymakers to seriously manage fatigue-related factors to ensure the safety of aviation operations and the well-being of flight attendants.

The work of flight attendants is associated with exposure to long-term stress, which may cause increased secretion of cortisol. The aim of the study is to determine the circadian rhythm of cortisol and to seek factors of potential influence on the secretion of cortisol in female flight attendants working within one time zone as well as on long-distance flights. The prospective study covers 103 women aged 23–46. The study group (I) was divided into two subgroups: group Ia, comprising female flight attendants flying within one flight zone, and group Ib, comprising female flight attendants working on long-distance flights. The control group (II) are women of reproductive age who sought medical assistance due to marital infertility in whom the male factor was found to be responsible for problems with conception in the course of the diagnostic process. The assessment included: age, BMI, menstrual cycle regularity, the length of service, the frequency of flying, diurnal profile of the secretion of cortisol, testosterone, estradiol, 17-OH progesterone, SHBG, androstenedione, and progesterone concentration. Descriptive methods and inferential statistics methods were used to compile the data. Comparing the profile of flight attendants from groups Ia and Ib shows that the curve flattened among women flying within one time zone. The secretion curve is also more flattened in women with less years worked and in flight attendants working less than 60 h per month. Due to the character of work, the female flights attendants do not have hypersecretion of cortisol. Frequency of flying and length of work affect the dysregulation of HPA axis.

Collaboration is a core component of work activities amongst flight attendants. This is as they work to promote onboard safety and deliver a high level of customer service. Yet we know little of how flight attendants collaborate and how we can best design technology to support this collaboration. Through an interview study with flight attendants, the authors explored their collaborative practices and processes and how technology aided such practices. While technologies like interphones and flight attendant call buttons act as collaboration tools, they identified instances where the usability and functionality of these devices were barriers for maintaining efficient communication, situation awareness, and information exchange. The authors used these results to identify design suggestions for technology that can enhance communication and collaboration in aircraft settings amongst flight attendants. To illustrate these design suggestions, they designed and developed Smart Crew, a smartwatch application that allows flight attendants to maintain an awareness of each other and communicate through messaging with haptic feedback. Smart Crew is designed with an emphasis on real time information access, location updates and direct communication between flight attendants regardless of their location on the airplane.

Fatigue poses an important safety risk to aviation, while it has been suggested as a key human factor which influences crew's working ability and flight safety. Flight attendants are in the first line to serve customers and also play an important role in flight safety. Thus, the modified Delphi method and grey correlation analysis are used to find the influential factors of the fatigue. Furthermore, the weight analysis and ranking of the fatigue factors of the flight attendants are discussed in the study context of the analytic hierarchy process. The results show that the company’s planning and scheduling have the highest weight of fatigue. Furthermore, a load factor of 80% appears tiring for the crew, despite the fact that the number of flight attendants meets the legal requirements. In fact, this has the highest weight of fatigue in short-haul flights, unlike long-haul flights where the weight differs. Research findings may have managerial implications to airlines and relevant government agencies towards fatigue’s reduction and improvement of flight attendants’ working life.

This research was aimed to examine flight attendants’ perceptions of dialect varieties in Indonesia. The researchers concerned in flight attendants' perceptions of various dialects used by partners, as well as passengers' attitudes toward the flight attendants' dialect. This research was conducted by using qualitative method. The participantswere 2 flight attendants which have different background cultures yet work in one aviation. In this research, direct quotations were presented unaltered. Each direct quotation is followed by a descriptive abbreviation noting the source of the quotation. The participants answered some questions that was given. Interviews were conducted using Whatsapp application because it was impossible to do face-to-face interviews with the participants in COVID-19 pandemic. Each interview took 30 to 40 minutes. Interviews were taped with a voice note feature on Whatsapp. The results revealed that each flight attendant saw the dialect variations in partners as an interesting thing to respect as long as the partner communicated well and politely, the passenger understood and got the point. In terms of the passengers' reactions to the flight attendants' dialect, there were possitive and negative from the passengers.

The occupation of flight attendant traditionally carries strong gender connotations and expectations. Based on the gender schema theory, in this study we investigated the relationships among work adjustment, family support, and gender role of male flight attendants, and how to improve the work adjustment of the men working in these circumstances. We conducted a survey with 221 male flight attendants employed by the leading airline in Taiwan and found that both gender role and family support had a significant effect on work adjustment. In particular, male flight attendants who had feminine or androgynous gender roles had lower levels of work adjustment and required more family support, whereas flight attendants who had masculine gender roles had higher levels of work adjustment and tended to seek less support from their family. Our findings suggest that both type of gender role and family background influence men's adjustment to working in a female-dominated work environment.

Competition in the airline transportation sector has significantly intensified following the deregulation act in the United States. To remain competitive, airline companies have begun implementing a range of strategies. One of the strategies commonly used by airlines is to improve service quality. Service quality has been very beneficial for airline companies to maintain profitability and increase market share. To achieve this goal, airlines must investigate the factors influencing service quality and enact improvements and regulations based on these determinants. There are significant studies in the literature on the influence of service employees on service quality. However, there are only a limited number of studies on the influence of the service quality of flight attendants, who are the public face of airline operations, on service quality. This study focuses on the influence of the level of attractiveness (a nonverbal characteristic) of flight attendants on perceived service quality. This research employs a neuromarketing method, specifically the frontal asymmetry approach, using electroencephalography (EEG) techniques. In the experiment, 37 participants were recruited, including 19 males and 18 females, and frontal alpha asymmetry metric results were derived from electrode pairs. In the experiment conducted at the Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Eskisehir Technical University, participants also evaluated the influence of flight attendant attractiveness on service quality using a survey technique. The findings indicate a significant difference in frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) metrics between attractive and unattractive flight attendants. FFA metrics of attractive flight attendants were greater than those of unattractive flight attendants. Additionally, FAA metrics were found to be greater under favourable service delivery than under unfavourable service delivery. Furthermore, among the service dimensions, the reliability and responsiveness dimensions had higher FAA metrics than did the other dimensions. A study comparing EEG results with survey responses revealed a statistically significant difference. The findings indicate that flight attendants with higher levels of attractiveness enhance their motivation to approach, thereby contributing to an improvement in perceived service quality. Moreover, these findings underscore the potential of neuromarketing methods for validating outcomes from conventional research approaches. Based on these findings, airlines should develop policies that prioritize attractive attributes in the recruitment of flight attendants. In addition, implementing various programs and incentive systems to maintain the attractiveness of flight attendants is essential. Moreover, providing services with diversified flight attendant profiles tailored to different customer segments is considered crucial for customer satisfaction and experience. Future studies could achieve more comprehensive results by using diverse sample sizes and age groups along with different neuromarketing techniques. Furthermore, the findings suggest a high potential for applying the frontal alpha asymmetry approach in other marketing fields.