A nation of air hostesses

Anjuli Bhargava
Business Standard
New Delhi: Even as airlines cut back on capacity and staff, air hostess and crew training institutes are springing up with gay abandon in all nooks and crannies of the country. In the last few months itself, a series of new crew training and air hostess training institutes have sprung up, all of which promise great careers and rewards to anyone willing to enroll.
Just last month, we saw the entry of Maples, which promises to train you not just for a successful air hostess job, but also a successful career ahead. In fact, it presents a three year bachelor’s degree in aviation, travel and tourism. I’m taking their word for it but the advertisement claims that the three year degree is a “university approved degree programme”. Which university, where, what kind of credibility will it lend and what kind of quality it will deliver is far from clear.
A few months prior to Maples’ entry, I read of a new academy called Flying Cats, that announced a grand alliance with “top international corporate giants” to provide a “unique training experience” to its students. It has signed a memorandum of understanding where the top three winners of the Femina Miss India World and Earth 2008 will visit all its centres to give them grooming tips. Flying Cats was launched in August 2006 by one of the ?Bollywood divas’ mid-air on a chartered flight 35,000 feet above ground level. In a stunning growth story, the training school already claims to have a pan-India presence with 40 centres from Jammu to Guwahati. Whew !
Earlier this year, Kingfisher launched the Kingfisher Academy. It’s the first ever and only training academy to offer the facility of V-UNIV, a single window e-portal for their students to learn, get accessed and have access to reference material online. Another academy called Avalon is offering a BBA and MBA in aviation. There’s TCA Air Hostess Academy that is affiliated to Breyer State University in Alabama, USA. The list goes on.
Smothered by new competition, Frankfinn (one of the older and better-known institutes) has been advertising heavily. The institute with an astonishing 115 institutes across the country including places like Rohtak and Panipat claims leadership of the market. Frankfinn claims that that Frankfinners are taught the “minutest nuances of the English language with English edge”, a programme specially designed in association with BBC Active, a claim I find hard to swallow every time I fly.
Someone needs to actually regulate the quality of programmes offered by these institutes which often promise the moon to impressionable young aspirants who are lured by their promises, but often find that they don’t have much to fall back on but their own devices. Almost all the institutes have an alarming number of foreign associations and affiliations. It’s not very clear what the affiliation implies or entitles it to. In most cases, even the credibility of the association it claims to be affiliated to is hard to establish.
Two, people need to exercise some caution before they chose one institute over the other as it is impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. DGCA or some other regulatory authority needs to warn aspirants that enrolling in one of the programmes is not a sure way to either a job or any kind of career ahead.
Meanwhile, I’m not sure which airlines in India will or will not survive the latest oil carnage but one thing is for sure: India won’t be short of air hostesses anytime in the near future.
July 04, 2008