Incidentally, can anyone else believe that the American airlines let these unions happen to them? They can't even promote employees for good performance anymore; there is only one criteria that employees are evaluated on, and that's time in that job at that airline. Change jobs and you're back at the bottom. Change airlines, and you're at the bottom.<p>The end result is that the flight attendants that choose the "best" routes (longhaul international) are the ones that care least about their job: they're at the top and they don't need to do a good job to stay there. Ironically, that's where the money is spent, and the people spending that money therefore get worse service. It's no surprise that anyone who pays for their own flights chooses the Asian or European airlines.<p>(My experience flying international first class on AA is that it's barely worth the taxes on the free flight. OTOH, when my company paid $10,000 for a flight to Singapore on Cathay Pacific, it was worth every penny.)
While the current "un-hotness" of flight attendants might be union driven, I'm fairly certain there's another dynamic that would kick in if unions go away: It's simply bad business to fire/not hire good employees because they don't live up to a certain aesthetic. As the first analysis notes, people probably aren't willing to pay much, if anything at all, for hotness, while competence might be valuable.
"...as much as male customers might have enjoyed the eye candy..."<p>Statements like this, in the article, annoy me. Men aren't the only sex that prefers looking at attractive women to unattractive women. Men and women may have different motivations for our preferences of whom to look at, but we all have the preference.
From talking to senior flight attendants about how things used to be in the old days, I think the blogger is correct that strong unions are the reason for this change in the composition of the flight attendant work force.<p>As to why you see younger attendants on short flights, that's because long flights are more desirable for senior flight attendants. The way the flight bidding system works, a senior fa can fulfill their monthly flying hours quota by working 8 days of trans-Pacific flights at the start or end of a month, leaving the rest of the month free.
Southwest Airlines is employee owned and operated, and service is a lot better (and friendlier) as a result. They love their jobs, and they care about the experience. That is much more important than physical appearance.
Two thoughts came to mind: (1) WTF is this doing on Hacker News? (2) If people are so uncomfortable with unions and labor laws, are they willing to go the Soylent Green factory when they hit 30, fail to ship or have medical issues?
I would be interested to see what makes the Asian airlines different... it seems as though flight attendants there are usually younger and quite attractive.
I still find flight attendants young and attractive (a present fact, not some dream or whatsoever). The thing is, it's just not so happening in US airlines, but in Asian airlines. Policies on age requirement have let the state as is, even there are also unions in those airline companies.