When thinking about the airline industry, flight attendants make up a large job category, one of the largest. In the US alone there are close to 100,000 flight attendants and around 8,000 are hired as extras every year.
In order to become a flight attendant, you will need to go through training offered by an accredited school. This basically means you will go through a long course that will help you to learn everything about what your duties and responsibilities are.
Minimum Requirements for the flight attendant job:
- Having a clean legal background (criminal) for the past ten years.
- Being at least 18 years old.
- Having a GED or high school diploma.
In order to attend a flight attending school, you will need to be:
- Safety conscious
- Energetic
- Flexible to the lifestyle changes that appear
- Multitasking
- Professional
- Able to connect with other individuals
After getting hired, a specific airline training program will also appear, different from one company to the next. While it is possible to participate in the training program and be considered for a job, the chances of you actually landing a job without flight attending training are just 5%.
What Happens At The Flight Attendant School?
The flight attendant needs to offer safety. You will have to learn all the important safety procedures for an airplane line from how to make an emergency announcement to how to stow luggage in the correct way. Also, you need to have really strong customer service skills, which are developed at the school. The most often met topics that are covered by a school include:
- Aircraft configurations
- Airport codes
- International and US geography
- First aid
- FARs
- Emergency procedures
- Resume writing
There is no way to deny the fact that you have a huge advantage in becoming a flight attendant when you enroll in a flight school. However, you need to also be aware of the fact that job opportunities come and go. You need to be sure that you seize the option as soon as it appears.
Besides flight attendant training, you need to be sure that the flight school also includes training so that you would know as much as possible about the exact type of flight attendant you want to be. After time passes and you are on the job, new opportunities will appear and extra training may be necessary.