Aviation India: Careers

Night outs, movies, hotels, parties...all this and more fascinated 23-year-old Patna-based Rachna Pandey when she came to Mumbai on holiday in 1989. Despite her parents’ disapproval (they wanted to marry her off), Rachna joined a foreign airline. She began earning somewhere around Rs 50,000 per month, and suddenly there were frequent foreign trips, stays at five-star hotels, trendy clothes, hobnobbing with the rich and the famous, bogeying late nights. Rachna’s marriage to her pilot boyfriend lasted just one-and-a-half years.
She accepts, “An independent lifestyle, fatigue, erratic sleeping patterns, numerous temptations, meeting new and interesting people made it difficult for me to share space with anyone.” She is now happily living on her own.
Suicides among airhostesses in the recent past could be attributed to the combination of several socio and socio-economic factors.
Erratic work hours, family pressures and adjustments as a homemaker and domestic violence could be responsible for an airhostess’s life going awry.
With domestic carriers flying almost 100 hours every week as compared to 25 to 30 hours in the past, most flight attendants are flying back to back flights. Besides fatigue, it leaves them with very little time for their families. Hence, 70 per cent of airhostesses quit their jobs within five years of working.
The other incidents that could diminish the aura of glamour and excitement, is a deluge of molestation cases on board in the last few weeks. “Heavy drinkers and smokers are agitated when they don’t get free booze and are not allowed to smoke. Some passengers even lodge false complaints when we don’t reciprocate their advances. They think they have bought a girl in a skirt along with the ticket. Some men take the aisle seat to get close,” says Preeti Raikar, a flight attendant on Air India.
And it is much more than beauty and glamour. As a flight attendant rightly puts it, “I am much more than a pretty face, and don't you forget it. I might save your life one day.”
24/01/10 Seema Sinha/Times of India