What It Takes To Become A Cabin Crew Member: 14 Skills And Qualifications
by Abdul Aziz Mondal Job & Career 11 May 2023
The career path as a cabin crew can be quite glamorous and exciting. After all, it is one of the few professions that allow work and travel simultaneously.
The cabin crew is generally responsible for passengers’ comfort, safety, and welfare during short and long-haul flights. Therefore, to shine in this career, you’ll require the skills, look, and personality to befit the description.
Today, we will review the top 14 cabin crew skills and qualifications that you will need to develop a successful career. Let’s get started!
Communication Skills
Effective communication is the most critical aspect of maintaining safety and security in aviation. As a cabin crew member, you will need to be comfortable showing the passengers their respective seats, demonstrating the safety procedures, serving refreshments and meals, and responding to any issues of the passengers effectively and clearly. Moreover, you may need to convey important messages from the co-pilots and pilots to the travelers.
These require good communication skills, including presentation, visual, and verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
With these abilities, you can successfully convey critical instructions even during emergencies to secure the maximum safety of the passengers and maintain discipline and peace inside your cabin.
Also, this will enable you to create a positive impression among the passengers by giving clear and understandable answers to their queries. Good communication skills are one of the most important qualities required for boosting this career, having rapid promotions, and receiving a cabin crew salary.
Teamwork
As an airline cabin crew attendant, you would typically work in a group of five or more crew members. This is because the amount of tasks the crew needs to conduct is innumerable, and it’s impossible to carry out all of them by yourself.
Therefore, you must maintain good relationships with your colleagues, learn to work as a team, and maintain effective communication. This will improve the overall customer service of the airline.
Assertive Behavior And Confident
Mindfulness and confidence are also critical in this position. If you can develop an assertive and confident manner, you will be able to make sure that the travelers adhere to the standards and rules of conduct during traveling.
Moreover, assertive behavior will make you a quick thinker and enable you to take charge in emergencies. Some passengers may positively respond to confident crew members only in such situations. Your confidence will assure them that you are concerned for their safety and make them follow your instructions more strictly.
Hospitality
Being hospitable towards the passengers is a must for a cabin crew member. Your hospitality will make you capable of resolving their issues and queries more efficiently and taking excellent care of them, ensuring they are comfortable throughout their journey.
A hospitable crew can swiftly cater to the passengers by easily understanding and anticipating their requirements. To develop a warm approach, try socializing with people more often, and adapt to challenging situations promptly and confidently.
Friendliness And Affability
A cabin crew member’s primary responsibility is to ensure the passengers are comfortable on their journey. And for this, you need to be approachable and friendly.
Often, people correlate the friendliness and affability of the crew members to the airline’s service and choose those airlines that have laudable customer service. For developing an approachable behavior, try focusing on people skills and being more empathetic.
Remaining Calm In Difficult Situations
Cabin crew members may need to handle unexpected or difficult situations, for instance, delays in take-off or landing, sudden modifications in plans, or handling of sick passengers or crew members. It is important to remain clear-headed and calm during such conditions to maintain order and control among the passengers.
Also, to handle such situations, you must be familiar with certain emergency protocols, such as first-aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation procedures (CPR), etc.
Learning basic skills, such as swimming, is also important to confirm safety during emergency evacuations or crash landings on water bodies. Although you will get life-vests to keep you afloat, swimming will be useful to reach the nearest land or boat or help the passengers in need.
Diplomacy And Tact
Diplomacy means tackling a situation without hampering any relationship or harming the self-esteem of other individuals. Cabin crew attendants come across dissatisfied passengers or difficult situations every now and then, which need to be resolved logically and diplomatically.
For example, if two passengers develop an argument regarding any issue, you may need to be diplomatic and step in to resolve it. You need to be respectful to everyone and give a reasonable solution to both sides. This skill is also important to maintain order and peace during the trip.
Time And Stress Management
Ability in time management is good for any career pathway. For cabin crew members, it is all the more important. From checking flight tickets and passports to providing refreshments on flights, punctuality is necessary in every aspect of this job to give the consumers a nice and positive experience. You can develop your time management skill by designing a timetable and performing your tasks accordingly.
Fulfilling several responsibilities and tasks may cause you to stress sometimes. And for managing stress, you may go through a book, listen to your favorite song, or play a game for about 5 to 10 minutes. This will rejuvenate you to work effectively for the rest of the shift.
Agility And Physical Fitness
Flight attendants do a very strenuous job. Either working to run everything smoothly on the aircraft to serve the travelers, they must work on their feet most of the time. Again, they may need to work overtime outside their native time zone. Even when they’re not on a flight, they may need to perform some ground duties.
All these may make them feel fatigued. However, you must constantly maintain professionalism in this profession, particularly during long-duration flights.
Therefore, you must be agile and physically fit to shine in this career. You can improve your strength and immunity with a healthy and clean diet and regular yoga and exercises.
Knowing Multiple Languages
Proficiency in different languages is a plus point for cabin crew members. While knowing English is one of the fundamental criteria for this position, you may also develop skills in some other regional or local languages for your own benefit.
Knowing other languages will make your interaction with others more efficient and enable you to deliver finer customer service. Moreover, grasping foreign languages will help you create a better resume and achieve better professional opportunities. This will also enhance your chances of being promoted on international flights, which can be a turning point for your career.
Cultural Awareness
One of the most important cabin crew skills is to know about different cultures, especially if you work on international flights. People from all around the world get on a flight and follow different customs and practices.
Some acts may seem normal in one culture while offensive to another. Therefore, a knowledge of multiple cultures will ensure you do not hurt any sentiments during your service. Also, some people may really appreciate it if you know about their custom’s intricacies.
12. Flexibility And Adaptability
As a cabin crew member, you will be doing a job full of uncertainty. You will be traveling to various countries with various cultures, lifestyles, time zones, and foods and face various situations. Therefore, you will need flexibility to deal with all these.
Moreover, you will not have the same crewmates on every flight. Therefore, you will need to cope with new teammates on every other flight, which makes adaptability another essential skill for cabin crew members.
13. Numerical Competence
Crew members need to handle loads of money while selling what the airline offers and providing other in-flight services. Therefore, numerical competence is a must in their service. You must add the totals accurately and give back the real change.
14. Organization
As a flight attendant, you must manage everything within the space you will be working in, keeping the aircraft clean and tidy, and to do that, you need to be very organized. This quality is also required for customer services, as many passengers may ask for different things, and you need to ensure not to serve them all the right things.
The Bottom Line
If you do not have some of these skills, do not worry. Many of these qualities are usually taught at the time of training, based on the company or airline you seek. Also, while preparing yourself with all these qualities, remember to be presentable and smartly dressed when on duty. Good luck!
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