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By Meluse Kapatamoyo

 The growth of Zambia’s airline industry has seen an influx of more young people wanting to join the sector as flight attendants - or cabin crew or air hostesses, as they are commonly known. 

But what do you know about the profession?

According to Weston Mapani, an Air Transport Consultant, the role of a flight attendant is not restricted to customer service alone. Flight attendants are also trained to have a pivotal role in ensuring that safety and security regulations are followed as well as being capable of administering First Aid.

For larger planes, one flight attendant per 50 passenger seats is needed.

Duties

"The majority of a flight attendant’s duties is safety related. Prior to each flight, they attend briefings with pilots. During this briefing they go over safety and emergency checklists, the locations and amounts of emergency equipment and other features specific to that aircraft type,” Mapani explained. 

“Weather conditions including anticipated turbulence are discussed. Any unserviceable or missing items must be reported and rectified prior to taking off. Attendants must monitor the cabin for any unusual smells or situations and maintain certain precautions such as keeping doors disarmed or open during refuelling on the ground.”

Flight attendants must conduct cabin checks every 20-30 minutes especially during night flights to check on the passengers and listen for any usual noises or situations. Checks are also made in the lavatory to ensure the smoke detector has not been deactivated and that nobody is smoking.

Emergencies

Attendants must respond immediately to call lights dealing with special requests and smaller emergencies, including a wide variety of in-flight emergencies that do happen from time to time.

Mapani said; “Flight attendants are highly trained for a wide variety of emergencies and how to respond. Emergency training includes rejected take-offs, emergency landings, cardiac and in-flight medical situations, smoke in the cabin, fires, depressurisation, on-board births and deaths, dangerous goods and spills in the cabin as well as land and water landings including preparation of passengers and the cabin, the emergency evacuation slides or rafts. Follow up survival skills include coping in open water, jungle, tropical zones etc.”

Extra skills

Attendants are now also given basic training on defence against terrorist attacks. In the US the US based Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires flight attendants on aircraft with 20 or more seats to hold a Certificate of Demonstrated Proficiency.

“Multilingual flight attendants are often in demand to accommodate international travellers. The languages most in demand other than English are Mandarin (Chinese) Japanese, Hindi, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian. In Africa, you often need Swahili.”

Read more

Flight Attendants need to take special care of their Appearance, which includes rules about height and wardrobe.  Also, find out more about the History of Flight Attendants in Zambia.


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