Flight attendants working in the hospitality industry face many challenges on a daily basis, especially on international routes, where they have to deal with a wide variety of passengers and more complex situations that are more demanding than on domestic flights.
According to a survey of flight attendants on international routes to China, it was found that the route they were least willing to perform was the route to India. Some flight attendants bluntly said that the poor conditions of the flight to India are not only a health problem, but also other factors that make them avoid this route.
[Complex caste system]—
There are two types of flights to India: from China to India and from India back to China. Flight attendants prefer the former, as the majority of passengers on these flights are Chinese tourists visiting India, making the job relatively easy. However, with passengers from India, their work has increased significantly.
A complex caste system still exists in Indian society to this day. In this view, people from the upper castes perceive themselves as much higher than the lower castes, and just sharing a flight with a people from the lower castes is already unbearable for them. Therefore, when accepting the services of flight attendants, they will also ask for differential treatment. Even when meals are served on the plane, passengers of different castes have their own requirements.
Meals on board are usually prepared and distributed to all passengers at fixed times. However, due to India's caste system, passengers of different castes have different meal times, people with higher castes must eat first, and people from lower castes can eat, and India is not only divided into two castes, but has a four-class caste system.
As a result, passengers from lower castes will consciously refrain from eating while the higher castes are eating, refusing meals delivered by flight attendants until it is their caste's turn to eat.
This greatly reduces the efficiency of flight attendants, and the work that could have been done at once needs to be done in batches according to different castes, which is not only a waste of time, but also needs to make arrangements for meal times for different passengers, and if there is an omission, it may be complained about.
In addition, due to the caste system, some high-caste passengers think highly of themselves and do not see flight attendants as equals, but as "servants" who are supposed to serve them. They would put them in a wheelchair before boarding and ask the flight attendant to push them onto the plane, even if they didn't have any inconvenience, just to enjoy the feeling of being served, so the flight attendant had to go back and forth many times.
In this case, it is possible to see many Indian "disabled people" waiting in long queues at the gate for wheelchairs. Airlines couldn't have predicted that so many people would need wheelchair services, so flight attendants had to go back and forth in case the flight was delayed. Even so, these passengers will take it for granted.
Of course, as soon as the service is a little slow or unsatisfactory, they will complain loudly and threaten to complain about the flight attendant.
This attitude and behaviour of Indian passengers is markedly different compared to that of passengers from other countries. They can easily avoid flight delays with simple actions, but they ask for special treatment.
Once on board, passengers who enjoyed being served would ring the bell frequently and ask the flight attendant to serve them multiple times, which was actually fine. Once a flight attendant is not responsive enough or the service is not satisfied, they will threaten to complain. Under this pressure, flight attendants must be extra careful so as not to get into trouble.
In addition to the arrogant attitude that comes with the caste system, flight attendants face other challenges when serving Indian passengers.
[Communication Barriers]—
Although many people think that Indian English has its own uniqueness and is easy to recognize, in reality this English is a big challenge for even those with strong English proficiency and requires extra effort to understand what the other person is saying.
To make matters worse, there are not many Indians who can actually communicate fluently in English, and it is mainly a small number of aristocratic people who can use English, which is no more than 5% of the total population.
Most of these English speakers belong to India's elite class, and they are able to learn and use this official language. However, apart from these people, the language environment in India is extremely complex, and there is no unified lingua franca in the country.
Even Hindi, which is widely revered, is spoken by only about sixty percent of the population, with a variety of different languages spoken.
Diverse linguistic environments are not uncommon, but the lack of a unified language system in India makes simple communication difficult. This is because India is a regional country, and each region has its own common language, and these rare regional languages will naturally not be specifically studied by flight attendants.
Passengers who speak Indian English with a strong accent are considered lucky, and are more likely to encounter passengers who speak a regional language that they have never heard of before.
This makes it much more difficult for flight attendants to understand the needs of passengers. Although flight attendants are part of the service industry, they must try their best to understand the needs of passengers, even if they are difficult to understand.
However, not only is the language system complex, but the body language in India is also very different from the norm. We usually say no or no by shaking our heads, but in India, shaking our heads is usually a sign of agreement.
This difference makes it unreliable to rely solely on shaking the head to determine intent, and it needs to be analyzed in conjunction with the details of the other person's expressions and movements. If it is a quick shake with a joyful expression, it is an indication of agreement; If it's a slow shake, it means no.
These nuances may be easy to judge for native Indians, but for foreigners, it is a challenge to understand what it means for Indians to shake their heads.
As a result, poor communication, incomprehensible Indian English, and unique body language combine to create a huge challenge for flight attendants when it comes to understanding the intentions of Indian passengers.
As a result, flight attendants often misunderstand passengers' intentions, causing misunderstandings and failing to provide the appropriate service. Faced with such a situation, Indian passengers naturally choose to complain. In response to these problems, flight attendants are really powerless but to silently bear these unfair complaints, and try to avoid similar situations on future flights**.
[Air India's management is lax.]—
The above issues mainly relate to the distress caused by Indian passengers to flight attendants. Apart from these personal problems, Air India's main problem lies in the irregularities in the management of its airlines.
As a safe and dangerous means of transportation, the aircraft needs to be thoroughly inspected before each flight to ensure that there are no failures that affect flight safety. However, this is not seen as an important matter for Air India. First of all, India is not known for its rigor. Secondly, many Indian airlines are privately owned, and despite their cheap fares, their lax approach to aircraft maintenance and vetting is clearly not up to the rigorous standards it should be.
This directly leads to the frequent flight problems of Air India's aircraft, which affects flight safety. Breakdowns are frequent, and airlines don't pay enough attention to repairs.
What's even more incredible is that the causes of these failures are varied, and at one point even an active bird was spotted in the cockpit. This can be detected by a pre-takeoff check, but it is clear that Air India is not doing this.
Not only is the maintenance work not serious, but their flight staff does not seem to put safety first, and there have been Indian pilots in the cockpit eating, drinking coffee and taking photos to upload to the Internet.
This behavior is undoubtedly risky, as food scraps or coffee spills on sensitive instruments can cause damage to the equipment and put all passengers and crew at risk.
However, the act of uploading ** to the network seems to indicate that the pilot sees this as something to brag about rather than something to be criticized.
In addition to the lack of flight safety, Air India also clearly has problems with the training of flight attendants. In 2017, after the take-off of an Indian flight, many passengers experienced an unpleasant smell that made it difficult for some passengers to breathe.
Despite the fact that passengers reported the situation to the flight attendants, the Indian flight attendants did not immediately look for the source of the smell and did not even start looking for the cause of the problem until after the plane made an emergency landing.
The problems raised by the passengers were not resolved in a timely manner, and the dissatisfaction of the passengers was not effectively appeased, and they did not start to deal with them until after landing, which naturally made the passengers feel unhappy.
In addition, complaints will be chosen. In the face of such complaints, the flight attendants can only bear it silently, hoping that similar situations can be avoided as much as possible next time.
[Air India's non-standard operation]—
Apart from the above-mentioned personal issues, Air India's biggest problem is that its operations are not regulated enough.
As a safe and dangerous means of transportation, all components need to be thoroughly inspected before each flight to avoid any minor malfunctions affecting flight safety. However, this does not seem to be a priority for Air India. First, India itself is not a nation known for its rigor; Secondly, many Indian airlines are privately owned, and while they offer cheap fares, they appear to be less stringent when it comes to aircraft maintenance and inspection.
This directly leads to frequent problems with Air India's aircraft during flight, affecting flight safety.
These airliners often suffer from a variety of failures, and airlines do not pay enough attention to maintenance. There were a variety of reasons for the malfunction, and at one point a bird was spotted in the cockpit. This could have been completely avoided if a thorough check had been carried out before the flight, but apparently Air India did not do this.
Not only that, but Air India pilots don't seem to take safety seriously either, and there have been pilots who ate and drank coffee in the cockpit and uploaded their ** online. This behavior is tantamount to making a joke about the lives of many passengers. If food or drink spills on important aviation equipment and causes damage, it will endanger the safety of everyone.
In addition, Air India also has problems with flight attendant training, and they are not as good as they can respond to the needs of passengers. In 2017, several passengers on an Indian flight had difficulty breathing due to an unpleasant odor in the cabin, but flight attendants did not immediately look for the source of the odor and waited until the plane made an emergency landing.
Passengers who do not have their questions addressed in a timely manner and lack effective reassurance do not begin to deal with them until after landing, which naturally leads to dissatisfaction among passengers.
The cabin environment of Indian flights is poor, and there is a lack of effective air filtration system, which makes the air unable to circulate after discovering odors, resulting in discomfort for passengers.
While the passengers of this journey eventually reach their destination safely, the unpleasant experiences of the journey will have a negative impact on their mood.
India is a leading country, on the one hand, the caste system makes the high-caste people enjoy the services of the low-caste people and consider themselves superior, on the other hand, the people of different castes seem to ignore the impact of their unhygienic behavior on other fellow travelers.
In the final analysis, the reason why Chinese flight attendants on international flights are reluctant to fly is due to the characteristics of the Indians themselves, and in various reports, we have seen the dirty environment of the streets of India, and the Indians not only do not feel ashamed of this, but do not feel anything.
In the era of equality for all, they still used the caste system of the previous feudal period, so that the gap between the high-caste elite and the low-caste commoners continued to widen.
Not everyone in India is very poor, their rich people are really rich, and the caste system essentially directly inhibits the way that those low-caste civilians climb upwards.
Intermarriage between high and low castes, if not even possible, would be considered to taint the blood of the upper castes. There are many complex reasons that have led to the current situation of Indian aviation, and it is clear that it will not be easy to solve this matter and will require a long period of reform.
But for Air India, what they can do is negligent in management, as long as they change their previous attitude towards flying, some problems will be solved.
Although they are the ones who provide services to all passengers, they also need the cooperation of passengers to create a good cabin environment, so that passengers can have a comfortable journey throughout the flight.