Inside Transport

Different attitudes to female cabin crew are striking, says Alastair Dalton

Two airlines. Two announcements. Two jarringly different signals as to how they regard female cabin crew. The carriers I’m talking about, Virgin Atlantic and Flybe, are both expanding in Scotland, the former now flying to Barbados as well as resuming its long-established Orlando route last month.

Meantime, the latter has returned to the skies under new management, somewhat against the odds after going bust at the start of the Covid pandemic, with its first Scottish flight taking off from Glasgow to Belfast City last Thursday.

It just so happened that the same day, Virgin Atlantic announced a new marketing campaign that highlighted front-line staff like cabin crew as being a key part of its operation.

The airline said: “The campaign will champion the rich individuality of the airline’s people and customers, building on research showing that travellers find most airlines’ crew to be impersonal in their service.

“In contrast, Virgin Atlantic crew are encouraged to be their true selves on board and on the ground. They don’t follow a script and are seen to offer a more personal touch.”

It rightly put the spotlight on highly trained staff such as cabin crew who are there to do far more than just to serve passengers drinks, and could save your life in an emergency.

The theme was also highly significant in an industry with such a traditionally sexist hierarchy, topped by pilots who were largely male, with predominantly female cabin crew characterised as having much more subservient roles. So how does the new Flybe view them? Shockingly, the publicity I received from the airline about their inaugural flights seemed to relegate cabin crew to being unnamed photographic props.

A picture issued by Flybe that was taken before its first Glasgow-belfast City service took off showed four people beside the aircraft.

It was captioned: “Flybe’s chief executive, Dave Pflieger, Glasgow Airport’s operations director, Ronald Leitch, and two members of crew.”

So those female staff did not warrant being named?

They are not named either in a separate photograph of the event on the Glasgow Airport website, unlike the two men. I had to request the crew’s names – they are Lisa Dooey and Mimi Bibi.

The previous day, one of the publicity photos for the airline’s debut flight, from Birmingham to Belfast City, showed the Belfast airport’s chief executive Matthew Hall and the first passenger, Andre Squire, standing either side of another unnamed female crew member.

The publicity firm issuing the photo on behalf of Flybe said the woman’s name “was not confirmed prior to issuing”. But they managed to get the male passenger’s name.

It just happens that Virgin Atlantic were originally among investors planning to take over Flybe while it was in the financial doldrums prior to its collapse.

I wonder what those in charge of the former’s new staff-centred campaign think about the way cabin crew at Flybe are treated?

It’s hardly the “rich individuality of the airline’s people” that is being cherished – because they don’t even seem to be given the respect of being referred to by name.

As one who went through the state sponsored Roman Catholic system and read at more school masses than I care to remember, I’d say to Cameron Wyllie (Scotsman, 19 April 2022) the only beneficiaries of the current socio-religious farrago – with its token Jewish school – are firstly the Old Firm and the Orange Order by keeping the “culture” of the recreational sectarianism they require to survive going; secondly, the Labour movement and Tories: artificially inflating trade union membership on the one hand, dividing and conquering the working classes (ironically) on the other. It does nothing to educate.

Catholic state education is a historical anomaly: 1918's socalled “Rome on the rates” is the result of the Catholic Church being in a position to haggle – unlike the squabbling Presbyterians forced long ago to sell their schools to municipal corporations for a pittance when schisms left them unable to afford them.

Yet for decades, most Scots Catholics left school in astounding ignorance of basic Christian tenets – let alone Catholic ones – to the extent too many still believe they must eat fish on Friday (not for 500 years!).

Hardly surprising when the Scottish Catholic church buck-passed its advantage to cynical teachers who largely abused the mandatory weekly hour of Religious Instruction as a free period for correcting homework whilst disinterested pupils defaced the job lot books from Ireland’s antediluvian Christian Brothers they were supposed to be reading in silence (to the extent Viz even ran a contest for entries). Now it wonders why its pews lay empty long before Covid signed many churches’ death warrants.

Scotland's Catholic hierachy had their chance and blew it. More than a hundred years later, the 1918 settlement is beyond ripe for change. I've no time for the cranks behind various “secular societies”, but secularisationofalltaxpayer-fundededucation is long overdue.

MARK BOYLE

Johnstone, Renfrewshire