FLYING JETSTAR

The bad news: The seats are like sitting on a toilet for 5 hours.

The good news: Jetstar got me home to Perth when Qantas was grounded.

Coffee, Tea or Me ?

Plane truth behind trolley-dolly brand

Laura Powell

October 31, 2011

 

Retro US drama Pan Am shows what life was like for a flight attendant in 1963.

A WOULD-BE flight attendant who had applied to Garuda Indonesia recently told a local newspaper that she and her fellow candidates had been subjected to a ''health examination'' by a male doctor that involved having their breasts ''fondled''. According to a Garuda official, the ''hand examination on breast'' was necessary to detect implants, which ''can have health issues when air pressure falls during flights''.
While not a practice common to other airlines, the incident is by no means unique in an industry that has long relied on female beauty and, in some cases, availability, to keep itself airborne.
Now the impending arrival of US drama Pan Am, the latest retro offering to follow in the wake of Mad Men (landing first in Britain, then next year in Australia), might raise questions about how much - or little - conditions have changed in the past 50 years for flight attendants, particularly those with breasts.

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In Britain, where the series is to be screened by the BBC next month, the channel is promising to fly viewers ''back to 1963 and the dawn of a glamorous new era of luxury air travel''. Glamorous - and incredibly sexist.
It is not hard to find evidence of what life was like for female flight attendants at the time. Two, Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones, even co-wrote a memoir at the close of the decade - charmingly entitled Coffee, Tea or Me? - in which Baker recalled being sexually molested by a passenger during an emergency landing. After complaining to her supervisor she was told: ''You know, Trudy, we can't have an unhappy, unsmiling stewardess serving our valued travellers, can we?''
This response might seem as archaic as the uniforms, but scrape the surface and the trolley-dolly caricature is still prevalent, thanks in no small part to the aggressively sexualised marketing and recruitment methods used by a broad range of airlines.
In July this year, Thai airline Nok Air posted a recruitment advert for ''beautiful girls with nice personalities'' to fill its cabin crew positions; those over 25 were deemed too old. Last month, a report in The Times of India accused Air India of following a similar recruitment policy. And new airline Thai Smile (operated by Thai Airways) is recruiting a 100-strong cabin crew of women under 24, ready for its launch in 2012.
''The reason for this is simply competition,'' explains Bev Skeggs, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths in London and author of Formations of Class and Gender. ''Airlines want to appear more high-end than their competitors to add value to their service,'' she says. ''To do this, they market their product as luxurious and desirable,'' with youth and beauty effectively transmitting that message.
Witness the Air New Zealand TV advertising campaign of 2009 in which cabin crew were photographed wearing nothing but body paint; or the Southwest Airlines planes emblazoned with murals of bikini-clad supermodel Bar Rafaeli. Virgin Atlantic has famously run £6 million ($9.09 million) advertising campaigns featuring its ''red hotties'' and there is a yearly ''Girls of Ryanair'' pin-up calendar.
Indeed, when the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), which represents 600,000 aviation industry workers, complained to Ryanair three years ago about the calendar, the airline's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, promised: ''We note ITF's objection to the calendar. Rest assured this has encouraged us to produce an even bigger and better charity calendar for next year.''
Aesthetic labour - when employees' feelings and appearance are turned into commodities - isn't a new phenomenon, and is familiar in retail too. For flight attendants, though, who need to provide emotional support - making travellers feel safe and looked after - there is a ''combination of sexuality and emotionality [that] takes place in a contained and often stressful environment'', says Skegg. ''That combination is explosive.''
Indeed, according to Gabriel Mocho Rodriguez, civil aviation secretary at the ITF in London, the most commonly reported complaints made by cabin crew ''relate to physical contact and inappropriate approaches''.
While a handful of complaints receive wider coverage - such as the allegations that Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually harassed Air France attendants, or that 25-year-old passenger Katherine Goldberg last month grabbed a male crew member's genitalia and demanded sex during a Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow - the majority are made anonymously, and often do not name the airline. ''They are afraid of losing their jobs, which are often payable hourly and on short-term contracts,'' explains Rodriguez.
The ITF has a campaign called Tales of Harassment, which logs all such complaints. They do not make comfortable reading. In one, ''A passenger pinched the flight attendant's bottom when she was passing his seat, touched her breasts while she was serving his meal and, later, stood up behind her, grasped her hips and simulated sexual intercourse.'' In another: ''A male passenger touched my behind. I told him, 'You do that again and I'll slap you.' I asked other passengers to witness the behaviour … you get afraid that you might lose your job.''
For those in the industry, fearful of their job security and entrenched in these sorts of behaviour, it is only on finding a new career that the scale of the harassment becomes clear. Ruth Walford was a flight attendant for Thomson Airways in 2007 and now works as a speech therapist. ''One time I was giving a pilot a lift home and he made it clear he expected us to sleep together.'' She is adamant that this is commonplace. ''Back then, I thought little of it, but if someone treated me like that in my job as a speech therapist, I'd be deeply offended.''
The pressure on appearance continues long after the recruitment process, too. ''Putting on weight is a huge deal,'' Walford says. ''When my friend from another airline went from a size 10 to 12 and requested a new uniform, someone from the administration office left a Slimming World leaflet in her pigeonhole.''
Additionally, most airlines stipulate minimum make-up requirements. Walford says that Thomson demands female crew wear lipstick, blusher and mascara. For Aviation Australia, the minimum requirement is foundation, eye-shadow, mascara, blusher and lipstick. Its handbook even stipulates specific rules for women: ''Have a trim every four to five weeks … Use a good quality shampoo … Use eye-shadow to emphasise your eyes.'' Even specific footwear is prescribed.
''Thomson Airways made us wear flat shoes on the flight but at the end of duty, we had to put on specially issued shoes with heels to walk out of the airport,'' says Walford. Proof indeed that not enough has changed since 1963: in the publicity shots for Pan Am, Christina Ricci and her co-stars, including Australia's Margot Robbie, are all wearing similar standard-issue heeled court shoes.
- GUARDIAN

Babies and Monsters in Business Class

Don't mix business and babies

David Flynn

November 7, 2011 - 10:08AM

Shattering the peace: is there a place for babies in business class?

You're settling into your business class seat for that long flight overseas to Asia, the US or Europe.
The laptop is charged up. There's a good book in your bag or downloaded onto your Kindle, and this month's in-flight movies include a few recent releases you never got to see on the big screen.
It's going to be a good flight.

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Then you hear it: a sound that all business travellers dread. The long, loud squeal that signals 'baby on board'.
Suddenly it's not going to be such a good flight after all.
Let's face it: babies and business class simply don't mix. You pay to be in the pointy end of the plane because you want to get some work done, or get some sleep so you can arrive at your destination rested and ready for a busy day. Probably both. And a screaming baby is not conducive to this.
It's not that I dislike babies. (Ok, I do dislike them, but that's beside the point.) It's just an indisputable fact that any business traveller is more likely to enjoy their flight if there's no baby within earshot. Not all babies cry of course, but the odds are in favour of it.
How can you beat those odds? The safest bet is to fly first class with Malaysia Airlines. MAS controversially removed bassinets from the first class cabin of its Boeing 747s when a revamp of the first class seats left insufficient room for the conventional bulkhead-mounted baby baskets.
But on Twitter, Malaysia Airlines CEO Tengku Azmil cited a different reason for the 'baby ban'.
MAS, he said, had received many complaints from passengers who “spend money on 1st class and can't sleep due to crying infants”.
Azmil followed that with the admission that it was possible for MAS to fit bassinets to the pointy end of its 747-400s “but many people complain about (crying infants).”
Further, Azmil says MAS won't fit bassinets to the airline's new flagship Airbus A380s when they take to the skies next year, telling this writer that “we are planning to stick to our (no baby) policy for now”.
This puts MAS at odds with most airlines. Qantas offers specially-designed bassinets in the first class cabin of its A380s, although these must be booked in advance. British Airways and Etihad also allow infants to travel in first class.
Apart from booking a first class ticket with MAS, what are some other strategies?
Forget about reaching for your trusty noise-cancelling headphones. They're designed to drown out the thuddering low drone of mighty jet engines, not the high-pitched banshee wail of a six-month-old infant. Instead, use a pair of earplugs to block out as much sound as you can.
Most importantly, be smart when it comes to choosing your seat.
Avoid the back of business class, which usually abuts the bulkhead where economy begins and where the first row of bassinets are located.
If you're stuck in economy, use SeatGuru to check the seat map for your upcoming flight and where the bassinets are found – then book a seat that's well clear of those danger zones.
David Flynn is a business travel expert and editor of Australian Business Traveller.

My contributionS

Create a "Crying room" like we have in church. 2 - 4 seats where harassed parents can take their voluble brood so they don'y disrupt the rest of the cabin.

Manacle all ill-behaved children (and their parents) to somewhere near the Economy Class toilets.