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One of my new year’s resolutions is to be more positive = complain less. I thought it appropriate then, to discuss the things I appreciated about being a hostie. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, have stuck out the job for all those years without there being some pretty damn good perks.
Essentially hosties paid to travel. The salary didn’t make me a millionairess but it sure was great having a disposable income. Free accommodation is included- and it’s in a hotel. Prior to becoming a hostie, my holiday budget only allowed for stays at hoStels. And on top of that, the airline provides meal allowances for layovers (most of it going towards retail therapy as opposed to meals).
Cheap tickets can be obtained for travel on your own airline, as well as other major carriers, for yourself and immediate family members. These days I balk at the cost of full priced airfares.
Hosties find themselves in different countries/continents within a matter of days, all the time. This was absolutely surreal.
Flying regulations allow hosties to get more days off than people with regular jobs. While I spent most days off recovering from jetlag/ hideous flights, I used the opportunity to go on mini-breaks too. And if I wanted to take trips to favourite work destinations, I could get discounted accommodation at crew hotels.
Who doesn’t love a discount? Hosties get plenty. Discounts are not limited to room service, hotel amenities and restaurants. Hosties are much-valued customers of businesses in the vicinity of the crew hotel, and are offered discounts on treatments like colonic irrigation, varicose vein removal, teeth whitening, botox injections and plastic surgery.
In Bangkok, a hostie can enter a shop selling poorly made imitation brand-name goods visited by ordinary customers, flash an aircrew ID card and exchange a knowing glance with the shopkeeper. The hostie is led out of the shop, down a dirty alleyway, up a dark and dingy staircase, atop of which awaits the ‘secret’ warehouse, allowing the ‘privileged’ guest access to the ‘best quality’ fakes at ‘special’ prices. Well I guess this wasn’t so much a perk for me as I’m not into buying fakes, but I got a good laugh from the overly dramatic experience of it all.
I appreciated how aircrew’s suitcases emerge from the luggage carousel first. In most destinations someone from the airport takes the suitcases off the luggage belt and line them up neatly. Aircrew have their own immigration lane.
Whenever I travelled to Oz as a uniformed crewmember, apart from one occasion where my suitcase was thoroughly searched, the customs people were friendly and easygoing.
Whenever I came home on leave or days off as a passenger, I was always treated nicely by our (male) customs officers who read “flight attendant” listed under “occupation” on my customs form. They were very chatty and eager to know what airline I worked for, and what places I had visited recently. I could see other passengers being hassled and having their luggage ransacked. Perhaps it was pure coincidence.
The opportunity to travel extensively, to work with and serve people of many nationalities, enriched my knowledge and appreciation of different cultures.
Oh, and being away from Oz for so long, each time I returned I learnt to look upon home with renewed appreciation. There truly is no place like home, and this sentiment, strangely enough, was a great thing about being a jetsetter.
In my previous post I wrote about the potential for svelte hosties to morph into heifers. Today I will outline some other occupational hazards associated with the hostie profession.
While some hosties stack on the kilos, others go the opposite extreme and become obsessive about shedding kilos. Although there are plenty of porkers, there is still the expectation and pressure to be thin. The airline industry favours too thin over too fat. My old airline punished hosties they deemed too heavy by delaying promotions until the weight came down. I’ve never heard of a case where anorexic hosties were held back from being promoted for their unhealthy weight. Too many hosties pop pills that have a laxative or hunger suppressing effect.
People who travel are familiar with the havoc it wreaks on the ‘internal plumbing’ system. Being constantly on the move and lack of access to fresh fruit and vege can cause system ‘blockage’. Conversely, eating dodgy food on the plane or in countries with dubious hygiene standards can result in a dose of ‘the runs’. Imagine you spend years flying around and staying in overly exotic places. Sure, this life can be exciting, but it takes a toll on your body.
Hosties are more prone to getting sick than normal civilians. They are surrounded by germs and sick travellers. Also, international travel takes hosties from one extreme climate to the next eg.freezing snowy conditions in Moscow one day, and intense humidity in Bangkok a few days later. The body can’t adjust to severe weather changes in a short time so easily.
That goes for being in different time zones as well. Flying completely screws up the body clock. Hosties sleep, are awake, and eat at odd hours. I was ALWAYS tired, I think I spent the majority of my time as a hostie in a zombie-like state. I could never sleep well before flights that departed very early in the morning, which meant by the time the plane was landing at its destination I was nodding off in my jumpseat. Quite a few aircraft emergency evacuation slides were inadvertently inflated by exhausted hosties in my time (the aircraft door was opened after landing while the slide was in ‘armed’ instead of ‘disarmed’ mode). Thankfully I wasn’t one of those hosties, but I did once hallucinate there was a man in the onboard closet when in reality I was merely looking at a jacket on a coat hanger- I was so deprived of sleep.
Hosties suffer from dehydration. Getting caught up in attending to demanding passengers and answering non-stop call bells mean hosties neglect to keep their bodies hydrated, or sometimes they just forget to drink water. Of course, drinking lots of water presents one with the dilemma of having no choice but to use the aircraft toilets which a) are filthy b) usually have a horrendously long queue.
Not drinking enough water, lack of sleep, a poor diet and constantly being in an air-conditioned environment amount to visible signs of health deterioration, such as eyebags/shadows, bad skin and an overall haggardness, which expensive creams and potions can’t erase. For the vain hostie, this is a most unwelcome part of the job.
Finally, medical studies have shown that continual exposure to radiation damages internal organs in flight crew. My internal organs hadn’t shrivelled up according to my last medical test but my lung capacity had decreased and my heart rate was abnormally fast. I think I should be concerned…
TomN (of Boat Heaven blog fame) recently addressed some issues that had been weighing on his mind. Throughout his years of air travel he made the observation that international hosties were generally pieces of “eye candy”, while our homegrown hosties had perhaps consumed too much candy and were “big heifers”.
I too noticed the beauty of European hosties, who all appear to have just stepped out of a hair salon, had their face made up by a professional makeup artist, and exude the glamour of models strutting their stuff on a Milanese catwalk even as they are walking through the cabin collecting rubbish.
Likewise, Asian hosties are always slim and have immaculate makeup and hair (the latter of which even the worst case of air turbulence does not seem to ruffle). I have heard that part of one Asian airline’s recruitment process involves its wannabe hosties modelling swimsuits. The recruiters want to eliminate any candidates whose unsightly bulges would be evident in the tight fitting uniform.
Unfortunately, in the era of equality for all in the workplace, image still reigns in the airline industry. It is undeniable that having the correct height/weight ratio, having a decent face (or one that can be made decent with the assistance of makeup) is an important, if not THE most important factor in securing a hostie gig. All airlines ask applicants to send in a full-length photo!
So TomN, in answer to your question “did QANTAS in the eighties start to hire big heifers?” I would have to say NO. Those rotund hosties on our national carrier became that way, as you speculated, “due to good living”. The lifestyle enabled them to indulge in fine food and drink.
I also have a theory about the correlation between body size and cabin aisle width, which may be applied to airlines with some super-sized hosties.
When a hostie begins her career she is young, slim and energetic, allowing her to cope with the lengthy, narrow aisle in cattle class. The ‘herd’ she is responsible to look after is numerous, so she rarely gets a moment to rest and eat, and besides the food in this cabin is barely palatable.
As her career progresses and she is promoted to work in Business class, she develops a ‘spare tyre’ because the food in this cabin is more abundant and palatable, and the aisle isn’t nearly as long as in cattle class so she expends less energy. The aisle is much more spacious in this cabin too.
By the time she is working in First class, she has attained ‘heifer’ status. There are only a handful of passengers and therefore much less work to do, which means more time to eat relatively good food/ sit down and gossip/ read magazines. Her metabolism rate has decreased with age for she has been in the company for a number of years now. The novelty of being a hostie has well and truly worn off, and she is hardly motivated to get off her huge lazy bottom and attend to the passenger’s call bell, although even if she summoned the motivation she wouldn’t have far to walk in that small cabin with the short and very wide aisle.
As the aisles widen in each cabin, so do the waistlines of the hosties. It’s almost as if the aisles deliberately accommodate to the change of the body from slim to super-sized.
However for TomN, the aisles are not accommodating enough. He complains about chunky QANTAS hosties banging their hips into his elbow every time he takes a cup or glass to his lips. TomN, I suspect that when these incidences occurred you were travelling in cattle class, where even the slimmest people have trouble fitting in the aisles, let alone big hosties. In my old airline (which was not Aussie, European or Asian) I recall constantly having to apologise to passengers for knocking their elbows with my hips (and I am not fat, or ‘hippy’). In order to avoid this, I soon learnt to walk in crab-like fashion down the economy class aisle. And if you were seated in premium class (where aisle space is plentiful) when your elbow met with a hostie’s hip every time you took a drink, then you must have been served by the beefiest hosties in airline history!
I can offer a couple of explanations as to why you didn’t experience the same problem on European and Asian airlines. Either their aircraft have huge aisles in economy- unlikely, or you didn’t notice any hosties bumping into you as they were walking past because you were too busy gawking at the “eye candy”- very likely!
Rumours. No workplace would be complete without them. I heard some very interesting ones in my hostie days. Although the narrators of these rumours would recount their tales with the utmost conviction, I was never too sure whether to believe them or not.
My favourite story involves a disgruntled hostie seeking vengeance on a cabin manager she had a run-in with. I don’t know the particulars of the incident that provoked this act of retribution, but clearly the hostie was angry. The hostie placed a note saying, “have a shitty day” in the cabin manager’s company mailbox, along with a pile of excrement to emphasise her message. Totally vulgar, yet this gem of a story left me in hysterics. My source of information was reliable, making this rumour likely to be true
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Cost cutting. It’s what companies the world over are doing these days. And it was very evident in my recent domestic flying experience. First there was mandatory self check-in. Then the inflight ‘service’ consisted of hosties dashing through the cabin with a cart filled with purchasable food and drinks. And if one wanted to be entertained, purchasable headsets were available to tune in to what I assume was elevator music.
As I was observing the cost cutting measures of my local airline, I reflected on my ex-airline and their particular methods of economising. My old airline had a different approach. Passengers were always given an abundance of free food and drink, in fact the airline had aptly been nicknamed the ‘flying restaurant’. Rather, I feel it was the hosties that suffered more in the name of cost cutting
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I was left terribly disappointed after my recent flight to Melbourne. It had nothing to do with the airline's service- I only expected to arrive to my destination in one piece travelling on a budget carrier- disappointment arose from the fact that my flight was uneventful, a complete snoozefest equal to watching cricket or ‘The English Patient’.
No offence to my travel companion- after the initial amusement of us belting out the chorus from ‘Memories’ as I was reminded of a previous life upon observing the hosties going about their pre-takeoff duties- I was utterly bored. So much for getting some interesting material for my blog
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I’m getting on a plane tomorrow. I’m looking forward to my mini-break (from doing nothing) to Melbourne, I only wish I didn’t have to fly on a germ-infested metal tube to get there. And worst of all, I have to pack. Even though I lived out of a suitcase for all those years, packing for trips was always a huge headache. Unfortunately, there’s no secret formula for successful packing. Everyone has their own system, and amongst hosties I have observed the following types of suitcase packers:
*The obsessive packer arranges, and then rearranges, the contents of their suitcase as early as possible before the flight, according to a carefully devised list. The need to be prepared for all social situations, weather conditions and ailments, places them in a constant state of anxiety.
*The last minute packer factors in luggage packing time when they set their wake-up alarm, so they can pack just before they have to leave home/ the hotel. I preferred to get the extra shut-eye
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Hosties are impossible to please (much like passengers). They complain when it’s too busy and the call bells are ringing non-stop, and they complain when there’s nothing to do and they are going insane from boredom. I preferred boredom to busyness! Here are some ways hosties kill boredom on flights…
*By far THE most popular way to past time is to bitch about the job and the company. I realise my blog is essentially dedicated to saying unpleasant things about the industry, but believe it or not, I was a very professional hostie (whinging only to friends, family, flatmates, and now to you dear strangers
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There’s a hostie friend of mine who I hesitate to ask ‘how are you?’ for fear of the lengthy and over revealing answer. The response is never just “I’m fine”. If all I have to hear from her is “I’ve got a very snotty nose at the moment” that would be a lucky escape for me. But more often than not, this friend will launch into details about the colour and consistency of the mucous. This information will be followed by yet another equally descriptive statement about her bowel movements (or lack of).
Sometimes there’s such a thing as TMI (Too Much Information). And alongside hairdressers, cabbies and The British, hosties are very willing imparters of personal information
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After seeing the video of a live birth as part of first aid training at hostie school, I decided I would avoid pregnant passengers (and adopt children). Watching that ‘horror flick’ and becoming familiar with the delivery equipment available onboard, was not nearly sufficient training for assisting a lady in labour.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help expectant mothers. I watched uncomfortably as women with bulging bellies waddled up to their seats during boarding, torn between wanting to show my hostie’s hospitality and offer assistance with bags, while also wishing to run and hide in the galley. You see it is also the hostie’s responsibility to ask obviously pregnant ladies to produce a doctor’s certificate as evidence they are fit for travel. However, many faux pas have been committed when responsible hosties approached big-bellied women, who turned out to be carrying only big bellies and not child. I am very poor at backpedalling when I say the wrong thing, hence the reason for avoiding ladies I suspected of being pregnant
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Comment by Judy
on Perks of the job
Ex-Hostie