boycruz

Interesting reading


http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3....php?id=154801


Never linked an article here before hope i did it correct and legal!

civicmon

Actually, this should be in the Newstand.

And what you can do is cut/paste a paragraph or two and inc. that with the link.

edit: I don't blame airlines for doing this.... go after the target market.

WHBM

Describing this as "outsourcing" is inaccurate as it implies that these flight crew will be used in place of current crews.

Crews hired at the destination have long been commonplace. On Japanese routes in particular Western airlines have long hired Japanese cabin crew, and there are many other instances, particularly where personnel speaking the language of the destination are not available at the airline's home base. Cathay Pacific used to feature this in their advertising "Cabin crew from 17 Asian lands".

Pan Am long had a crew base at London Heathrow and this was passed on to United Airlines when the routes were sold.

There has also always been the inverse with pilots, where many third world airlines have expat pilots from western countries. I suspect there are many more US pilots working for overseas airlines than there are overseas flight crews in total working for US carriers.

das

This is fairly common around the world, especially on flights that involve stopovers in intermediate countries. For example, makes much more sense for DL to staff Paris to Chennai and Frankfurt to Mumbai flights with Indian crew members than to have a US crew do a double layover in Europe.

Virgin Atlantic has HKG based crews that are about half the crew on HKG-SYD. QF has crew based in Asia and is opening up a crew base in LHR - I'm assuming British wages are higher than Asian wages, but that London layover costs are substantially higher than layovers in Asia, and also that British crew seem more Australian....

Efrem

I think it might be helpful if AA (perhaps others too, but that's where my recent experience is) hired French cabin crew for their flights to/from CDG. I understand this might be limiting in terms of personnel assignnments, but it is embarrassing (to a semi-decent French speaker) to hear the atrocious French spoken by some of the FAs who make the in-flight announcements. I'm sure they're fully qualified in every other way, give good service, etc., etc., but they say French words the way a native North American English speaker would pronounce those sequences of letters. (Memo to AA: could this, properly presented, give you a competitive edge over everyone except AF in this market?)

WHBM

Ah yes, AA arriving in Paris (and indeed departing the US for there)
"Uhhhh..... mez-dames ate mon-see-oors, been-venoo a ParisFrance oh-jour....uh....oh-jour....uh....hey Alice how d'ya say this word here ....."

Other airlines have discovered recorded announcements

B747-437B

Delta's services to Mumbai have been 100% staffed by India-based FAs for many years now. This is nothing new. In fact, Delta's Mumbai-based FAs are the only unionized group of FAs in the system!

hfly

What an absolutely crappy article, the fact that they talk about "Malaysian crew of Indian ancestry" is especially ridiculous. Not only has Delta employed FA's for its Indian routes since they started flying them, but they were "inherited" from Pan Am, it should be noted that most airlines have always done this with intermediate stops, I remember that Pan Am and Delta had Polish FA's for the legs from Warsaw and Krakow to Frankfurt, etc. This is not new, nor is it outsourcing.

Babu

Your point is well taken, but I've seen it the other way around too. Some AF crew I have come across (EWR-CDG route) spoke abysmal English. Others speak English very well.