Both PanAm and Northwest hired flight attendants in Japan, native speakers.

During ‘80s toward end of PanAm’s Pacific operation, PanAm did not have flight attendant base at NRT. Native Japanese speaker FAs hired in Japan were based at HNL, LAX, SFO, JFK where PanAm had non-stop flights to NRT. When UA purchased PanAm’s Pacific operation, native Japanese speaker FAs went to UA. Later UA has opened FA base at NRT and UA has hired NRT based FAs in Japan.

Northwest also hired native speaker FAs in Japan, also. But Northwest was little different, what I heard was that Northwest FA union in the U.S. did not allow non-U.S. FAs to work on flights in/out of the U.S. Along the line of non-Americans taking jobs away from Americans… Northwest U.S.-Japan flights were two Japanese crew called “Interpreters” onboard. Interpreters were not part of cabin crew and were addition to cabin crew members. Interpreters were not supposed to do meal service and were not part of safety duty. Northwest had prior flight attendant experience as a qualification when hiring interpreters. FA union in the U.S. claimed non-Americans stealing jobs from American, but the U.S. FAs had no problem interpreters doing drink service and meal service while they sat at jump seat reading People magazine.

Northwest did hire flight attendants at all Asian countries they flew. Besides NRT, Northwest had FA base at TPE, HKG, MNL, SIN, etc. Those FAs spoke local native language were called “local FAs” and flew intra-Asia flight only. Northwest flights from the U.S. to NRT consisted of all U.S. crews plus two Japanese interpreters. From NRT to Asian destinations all crews were local native language speakers and one U.S. FA onboard as a lead FA. Beside lead FAs, Northwest U.S. FAs flew only to NRT and never flew beyond NRT.

Northwest FAs also became part of DL with merger. I am pretty sure DL still has FA base at NRT inherited from Northwest, but I am not sure if DL has hired local native speaker FA in Japan since merger with Northwest.


I fly AA and AA’s Japanese speaking FAs are pretty much same. Japanese speaking FAs at AA are hired in the U.S. I have seen some FAs are native Japanese speaker, some reason all native Japanese speaking FAs at AA I have seen were old. But most Japanese speaking FAs at AA I have seen were like they just took one semester of Japanese class at local community college…