Qantas, Virgin flight attendants reveal the shock | Australian Markets

There’s a darkish facet to working 30,000 toes in the air.

Medical emergencies, sleep deprivation and 20-minute lunch breaks are all in a day’s work for Australia’s battler cabin crew.

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And then there’s the blow-ups over ham-and-cheese toasties.

“It’s quite an interesting moment when someone calls you a f**kwit because you don’t have any toasties left,” a Virgin flight attendant advised NewsWire this week.

“Most of us just laugh it off, but it does get grating for a lot of the crew.”

In unique and wide-ranging interviews, two flight attendants – one with Virgin and one with Qantas – uncovered the gobsmacking ranges of entitlement that some members of the travelling public possess.

“I had a friend giving CPR (to a passenger) a few years ago,” the Qantas attendant mentioned.

“In the middle of CPR someone tapped her on the shoulder and asked when they were getting breakfast.”

Both have labored the infamous Bali route, however warned the stresses of the job lengthen far past impolite and abusive passengers.

The day-to-day actuality

For one factor, flight crew are uncovered to illness at elevated charges – the inescapable impact on working in a contained aluminium tube full of lots of of different people.

“Probably in the first 18 months of my flying career, I remember my friend saying to me, ‘You are sick all the time’,” the Qantas attendant mentioned.

“I probably don’t get as sick now or maybe I work through my sickness better, I don’t know.

“I think you’re just rundown all the time.”

A flight crew work day isn’t a 9-5 clock-off job and the Qantas attendant mentioned her shortest day was about 10 hours.

“The other thing that is probably not like a normal job is that the timings can be really weird,” she mentioned.

“So for example, out of Brisbane we do a flight to Manila.

“And we start working in Brisbane at about 6pm. So you’re taking off about 7.30pm and so you’d land in Manila at 1.30am.

“Now that’s fine, but the flight the next day that you go home on takes off at 2.45am.

“So your wake-up call to go to work in Manila is midnight.”

Uneven work schedules means sleep deprivation and the attendant estimated she misplaced no less than one night time of sleep a week.

“There’s a lot more loss of sleep I think than people realise,” she mentioned.

“(That’s) particularly on Australian airlines. We do a lot of ‘back of the clock’ flying just in order to meet up with other carriers or in other countries or other flights.”

And when the flight crew are working, it’s exhausting for them to catch breaks.

Qantas cabin crew are entitled to a 20-minute break within the first six hours of obligation after which 20 minutes each subsequent 4 hours.

Virgin employees get 20 minutes each 5 hours.

“On the A330 there’s four seats in economy (class) with a curtain around them,” the Qantas attendant mentioned.

“So the crew go and sit in there and they can close their eyes, read a book, watch a movie, do whatever it is they want to do to decompress.

“A couple of the aircraft have a seat at a door. So you’ll just basically pull a curtain around that and sit at the door.”

“You can’t go to get away. That’s probably the thing that is the most misunderstood part of the job I think, that there’s no time where you are truly on a break.”

The Virgin attendant mentioned he may see up to 1000 people per day and at all times needed to “be on”.

“They are long days,” he mentioned.

“We can see up to 1000 people per day, which is physically and mentally exhausting.

“We’re also away from our families for some significant milestones and that can be emotionally draining.”

Flight crew coaching can also be intensive and fixed.

From CPR and evacuations to firefighting and coaching to take down terrorists, flight attendants kind a core half of the world-class security document at Qantas and Virgin.

“There’s a whole lot of extra skills that we don’t probably talk about as much because it’s not fluffy,” the Qantas attendant mentioned.

The Virgin attendant mentioned crew members went via six-month checks to keep “up to standard”.

“We are constantly running towards the fires, so to speak,” he mentioned.

Horror tales

And then there’s the growing swell of poor behaviour from travellers, which the Qantas attendant mentioned had escalated since the pandemic.

“People have less patience and less resilience,” she mentioned.

“So there is an increase in negative behaviour, a real increase in selfishness.

“That the only people that are important are, you know, the person involved.”

Some of the tales are appalling.

“I was talking with a couple of colleagues the other day and one of them had been having a conversation about seat belts for children,” she mentioned.

“Making sure the child had a seat belt on, which is a requirement. It’s a safety thing.

“And these people just did not want to put a seat belt on this child.

“And the idea that if you push back enough and you get rude enough and angry enough that somehow you’ll be able to browbeat your flight attendant into not following the law.

“It just means there’s so many more conversations that you have to have with people about their behaviour.”

She mentioned she had by no means needed to bodily restrain somebody, however she knew crew members who had been pressured to take that dramatic step.

“I think people don’t realise how much training we do around de-escalation techniques,” she mentioned.

“Twice a year we do full emergency procedures. We do training around de-escalation, like verbal de-escalation, physical de-escalation. We do training in physically restraining people and defending the flight deck.”

Bali

The Qantas attendant mentioned there was “a different demographic” of flyers travelling to Indonesia’s island paradise they usually may every so often current further challenges.

“Certain routes have a certain demographic and the way that people behave,” she mentioned.

“Responsible service of alcohol is pushed a lot more on (Bali) flights.

“We’re always very careful with alcohol but if you’re on a Bali flight, you’re probably counting (drinks consumed) more than you would necessarily on another flight.”

The Virgin attendant mentioned some passengers tried to sneak in booze from duty-free retailers or vape in the airplane bathroom, and even of their seats.

He additionally mentioned he had copped verbal abuse from people sad about the on-board menu.

“About the lack of options available for purchase, the retail menu in the seat pocket,” he mentioned.

“Being called every name under the sun because we can’t get them a toasted sandwich or a wrap.”

The Qantas attendant mentioned there have been usually “triggers” and “warning signs” that a passenger would possibly show to be troublesome.

“When someone sits in their seat and you haven’t taken off and they ask you for a beer, yeah, that’s a bit of a warning sign,” she mentioned.

“Ordering for mates. Ordering multiple drinks.

“Like, ‘ah three rum-and-cokes and what are you having Macca?’ That sort of thing.”

The Virgin attendant mentioned “pressing the call bell constantly” was one other warning flare.

“There’s nothing wrong with having a good time,” he mentioned.

“It’s about having it in a responsible manner.”

He emphasised that “99 per cent” of travellers to Bali have been “amazing people” however the “one per cent” tainted it for everybody else.

Pay charges

Despite the distinctive pressures of the job, pay charges for cabin crew are at the decrease finish Australian salaries.

The award charge, or minimal degree of pay, for a full-time entry-level flight attendant is $26.64 an hour, which is simply $1 an hour more than the minimal wage a 21-year-old employee can earn at a fast food outlet.

According to employment platform Seek, the average annual wage for a flight attendant ranges between $55,000 and $65,000.

The average annual wage in Australia was $102,700 in November 2024, in response to the ABS.

But the wages panorama for crew members could possibly be shifting.

This week, the Flight Attendants’ Association of Australia introduced some 750 further Qantas cabin crew would obtain pay bumps of up to $20,000 a 12 months.

The union credited the passage of Same Job Same Pay reforms, which seeks to equalise pay charges between direct rent and labour rent staff at giant enterprises, for the uplift.

The Qantas attendant mentioned she welcomed the industrial relations modifications.

“The whole thing with Same Job Same Pay is they are doing the same job,” she mentioned.

“It’s not like being employed by a labour-hire company changes the nature of the work.

“They do the same training, they wear the same uniform.”

Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson has warned the reforms will erode the company’s competitiveness in opposition to rival worldwide airways.

“We compete with 55 competitors internationally,” she advised Sky News final 12 months.

“The cost for labour, for cabin crew now for us, for Qantas international, is three times what our competitors from say the Middle East or from Asia bear.

“So it is going to continue to put pressure on the business and we don’t have productivity offsets right now to do that.

“We’re going to have to go looking for them. We will go looking for them because the one thing we have to do is to make sure we have a sustainable business that can compete on a sustainable footing.”

‘Second to none’

The attendants are each skilled and advised NewsWire there have been important explanation why they determined to keep flying.

“We took a group of special needs children away for their first camp,” the Virgin attendant mentioned when requested about a cherished second from the job.

“And they were just so excited to be on the plane. They were so inquisitive, asking us lots of questions. It just made our day. It was special … one of the most memorable things I’ve ever done. Just seeing how excited they were to be travelling. Their pure excitement for it, it was second to none.”

The Qantas attendant mentioned she was proud to be a half of her “tight-knit” work neighborhood.

“I’ve never been bored and I love the people that I work with,” she mentioned.

“I think we’re a really close-knit community.

“It’s an amazing job and the people are amazing. It’s something to be proud of, to be a part of that community.”

Both attendants pleaded with Australians to assume more rigorously about the tasks of their job and to recollect after they step onto a aircraft, they’re additionally getting into a office.

“I think people need to understand that the role of a flight attendant is not to be waiter or a waitress,” the Qantas attendant mentioned.

“They are the first responder, the only people that can help you in an emergency.

“People need to take a bit of a look at how they perceive this role and realise that they are coming into somebody’s workplace.

“We want them to have a great experience but everybody needs to have a great experience.

“All the customers and all the staff need to be respected. So be kind.”