Is becoming a flight attendant hard to do?
I enjoy flying and always think that the flight attendants have the coolest job ever. They get to travel and get paid. What kind of training do you have to do? #flight-attendant #flight-safety
2 answers
Samantha Worthan
Samantha’s Answer
Being a flight attendant is the coolest job second of course to being the captain! After your interview with an airlines you will be invited to training. Training is approximately six weeks and there is a lot to learn during this six weeks. During your training you will learn the essential part of being a flight attendant, the safety of the aircraft and your passengers.
Onboard an aircraft flight attendants are the emergency medical response team and aa such training will teach you how to respond and treat medical emergencies and where all emergency equipment is onboard the aircrafts you will be flying on. They are also the fire department, so you get to learn the different fires and how to extinqiush them. Flight attendants are also responsible for protecting the flight deck. This part of your training will teach you how to defend the flight deck with a secret ninja course. Lastly, you will be taught the different types of emergency landings you could face and teach you how successfully evacuate the aircraft.
Being a flight attendant is one of the greatest jobs on this planet. You meet some of the most interesting people, see wonderful places for free, and work with the funniest co-workers. It was so much fun some days I couldn't believe I actually got paid to do it.
Good Luck and I hope I answered all of your questions regarding training to become a flight attendant.
Dr’s Answer
It will be difficult to memorize many new things during any flight attendant training, especially if it's your first airline to work for. In general, each thing to know is not difficult in itself, but just the sheer number of things can be hard to keep in mind and not get mixed up. There's a quick learning curve. You have to learn about different types of aircraft, safety and security procedures, public announcements and slew of other need-to-know procedures and facts. It's a lot and crammed into a short time, but it's doable.
A great thing is that you will be trained with many others at the same time. So, you might have like 50 or even 100 other trainees all learning the same stuff, sharing similar experiences, which means there'll be plenty of support and study groups. If you prefer to prepare for the exams yourself, that's also an option.
The best piece of advice here is to know your manual well. Every flight attendant is given a flight attendant manual. It used to be a paper binder but nowadays it's likely just an app inside a company-issued tablet. You'll study it and come to know it well during training and it becomes a valuable resource for the rest of your flight attendant career.
With my airline, we were put up in a hotel with a gender-appropriate roommate through training who was also going through the same training, so we sort of lived and breathed our training. Besides getting minimal rest, it was all about the training for that month.
There are 2 types of tests: written ones that assess your knowledge of the facts and proficient tests that measure how well you can perform a duty (like CPR, self-defense). On both types of tests, you need to ace them! That's right, you need to get a 90% success rate with everything you're tested on. If you do not, you can redo it maybe once or twice, but there's not much forgiveness or leeway there.
Also, they are very strict with you being where you need to be, early or on-time, but never late. If there's a 5 minute bathroom break, for example, and you come back to the classroom after 6 minutes (1 minute late), the classroom door might be locked and you...well, you might get kicked out of training! If you think about it, being late to an airplane can also delay things since pilots may have limited runway take-off times and being one minute late might mean having to wait for Air Traffic Control to allot another departure time that's significantly later, which means people might miss their connections, etc. Also, instructors look at your attitude and how well you get along with everyone else. Nastiness is not tolerated. You definitely need to be a people-person since you'll be dealing with all kinds of people on this job.
So, training can be stressful but it's also exhilarating. You'll probably make friends there that you'll become really close with and perhaps they'll be your lifelong friends or you might even marry someone from training. Perhaps it's the heightened emotion during training or the desire to share your experiences with someone going through the same thing, but it's certainly common for co-trainees to date each other. Yes, some have personal rules not to date co-workers and others are already spoken for, and that's of course respected too.
Flight attendant training is a wild ride and it's just the beginning of an exciting lifestyle. There are always those who do not graduate for one reason or another, and there are some who are attempting it a 2nd or even 3rd time. (Based on the airline's policy, you may be able to try training again after waiting a year.)
Besides your initial training, there's also a one-day class you must attend annually to refresh all the old stuff and learn anything new that's changed.