Travel plan idea blog

Becoming a flight attendant for Korean Air or Asiana

I wanted to share a story I heard recently. I heard it from a friend who I trust but he heard it from someone I've never met so it may not be true.

Anyway, the story goes like this: becoming a flight attendant is a big competition in Korea (I believe this part since many English majors I know personally want to become flight attendants) and they attend a special school affiliated with a university and one of the two major Korean airlines where only a certain percentage of them can graduate to become flight attendants.

The main part of the story though is that to get into this school they have an interview in which they are required to scrub all makeup off their faces in front of the interviewers (presumably so they can make sure they hire beautiful young women as flight attendants).

Again, I don't know that this is true but it is believable as many people who have flown Korean Air and Asiana have commented on how attractive the flight attendants are (especially compared to western airlines).

If you've never flown Korean Air or Asiana, here is a little demonstration of the type of flight attendants they choose. I didn't watch the whole thing as it's pretty long:

I just want to confirm that these women are probably not just models in the airline uniform. The women you see on the plane are equally attractive.

The fact that they are pretty much all young reminds me of another story a former student told me a long time ago. She said that she would only work for Korean Air (assuming she passed the interview and graduated from the competitive school) until she was 26 because after that the airline would want to move her to ticketing or something to make room for a younger woman on the plane.

Now I don't know if this is true and on each flight you see at least one woman who is clearly over 26, but it is easy to believe that most of the flight attendants are 26 or less.

It would be easy to say that this is unfair and something should be done. I'm sure some people would suggest not flying an airline until it became clear that hiring practices were fair. However there is a reason my wife and I like flying Korean Air, Asiana, JAL (which seems to hire attractive women as well though more of them seem over 26 if I had to guess). The service is much much better than we get on American Airlines, Continental, Northwest, etc.

So fair or unfair, we're flying with one of the Asian airlines whenever we get the chance.

Posted by James Trotta at November 12, 2007 1:36 PM | TrackBack