Career prospects in air travel reach new high!

There is a good news for all travel enthusiasts who are keen to carve a niche in the travel and tourism sector. The news is favourable specially for those who always wanted to become a flight attendant, get a chance to socialize with the high-flying squad, and wanted to take home hefty remunerations.

The chances of securing your much cherished and coveted job are now much better, with career prospects in air travel reaching a new high. This holds true for both international and domestic operators, who are on a full-blown take-off mode.

However, even though the airlines are recruiting for flight attendants or air hostess by the planeload, the job scenario is getting equally fierce.One of the managers looking after the national recruitment process at Air Deccan says, "We receive more than 450 applications on an average in any given month. The number of openings we have for this profile is not more than 55."

• A Flying Career

Being a flight attendant as known widely now, is fairly demanding profession. It requires skills, stamina, the knack to smile amidst trying times, and of course truckloads ofpatience. But the payoffs you get rule outeverything. A domestic airline pays air hostesses/ flight attendants salaries ranging between Rs20,000 and Rs 25,000 every month. This may go up to Rs3.9 lakh for senior employees. International airlines’ starting salaries are between Rs 15,000-35,000 for freshers, and upto Rs7.5 lakh for senior employees.

To meet this growing number, many aviation academies have opened up that assist individuals in building a career in this ravishing industry.

Many questions may crop up in the mind of an aspirant who is starting out fresh.

What do these academies offer that an airline’s training does not?

Are the professional courses actually worth the money?

One may or may not get clear answers, for it is a path that every person has to traverse on his own. While the academies providing such programmes go all out infavour of such courses, some airlines tend to disagree.

• Aspire to be a Flight Attendant?

Airlines Take

A recruitment manager working with a leading airline says, "It depends on the situations too. When we don’t have much time at hand to look for the right candidates and need quite a huge number of professionals, we go to these institutes for mass or bulk recruitments. In fact, we have recruited many candidates from such institutes.”Students qualifying from reputed academies are better equipped to crack the job interview. They are more well-groomed and confident, he adds. Almost everyone agrees that it is the strong communication skills that are the differentiating factors. Most of the airlines pick students because of this one factor instead of the typical cabin crew training they get, which the airlines themselves provide.

All programmes offered by professional study places are a blend of personality development and airline orientation. For instance, students may learn in cabin crew training about ground service training, insight into the computer reservation system, practical aircraft orientation, foreign languages, business English, first-aid, personality development, etc.