Thai Air Plans To Allow Those Over 45 To Take Early Retirement.

[sbk]

I realize that many of you think its important to have cute young flight attendants but I am not sure how comfortable I feel with flight attendants with experience retiring so early. I don't really look at a flight attendant as simply eye candy or merely a waiter in the sky but hope that, in an emergency, they have the presence of mind and ability to keep people calm, keep things sane and perhaps have enough sense and experience to do the right thing should it be necessary.

I understand Thai is struggling (aren't most airlines these days?) but I have to wonder how sensible this approach is, it makes it seem as though cost cutting is more important than other factors.

[edwinchester]

I have never flown Thai as I always find their option too expensive so can only pass on my wifes(Thai) experience.

She recently flew LHR to BKK and on meeting her at Swampy she remarked how old, rude and unhelpful the cabin crew were and vowed never to fly Thai again.

[alant]

I have never flown Thai as I always find their option too expensive so can only pass on my wifes(Thai) experience.

She recently flew LHR to BKK and on meeting her at Swampy she remarked how old, rude and unhelpful the cabin crew were and vowed never to fly Thai again.

never flown ryanair then?

[alant]

"I realize that many of you think its important to have cute young flight attendants but I am not sure how comfortable I feel with flight attendants with experience retiring so early. I don't really look at a flight attendant as simply eye candy or merely a waiter in the sky but hope that, in an emergency, they have the presence of mind and ability to keep people calm, keep things sane and perhaps have enough sense and experience to do the right thing should it be necessary.

I understand Thai is struggling (aren't most airlines these days?) but I have to wonder how sensible this approach is, it makes it seem as though cost cutting is more important than other factors."

i cant agree with your points above, i may even consider it ageist. why should it be that a diligent young member of staff that has received the correct training would be less able to ensure as far as possible the safety of staff?

i am not sure also that the young staff member would be that more atttractive to the eye come to think of it, there are some stunning 45 year old ladies.

there may be good reason for this decision and an assumption that it is because thai is struggling does not mean that the other factors you state hold true.

[Ricardo]

I'd be more concerned about losing those middle/senior-management, aged over 45, who might actually know what they're doing, early-retirement can cost a business its accumulated-experience, if you believe in people as being the real capital involved.

But older workers do tend to earn more, so are seen as a good place to cut costs, and I'm sure some of them would welcome a nice retirement-package, to supplement the money they can still earn by moving to one of the Gulf-based carriers, which are taking so much business from the stuffy old national airlines.

[siam2007]

THAI AIR ASIA's cabin crew are not only

1) younger

2) friendlier (making you really feel welcome on board)

3) more cute/handsome

they as well have a MUCH MUCH better safety-attitude than any cabin crew of THAI INTERNATIONAL I came across recently.

to work for THAI INTERNATIONAL, you have to come from a Thai Hi-So family, and your actual skills are secondary (even you will be paid 15 months salary per year), where as THAI AIR ASIA follows the guideline "Hiring for attitude, training for skills".

unfortunately, the same can not be said for their ground-staff and for the Malaysian mother companies' cabin crew....

[PhilHarries]

Ideally the flight crew should not be made up of older or younger members but a mixture of the two such that the young ones gain from the experience of their elders. That is the basis for on the job training right across the board in all businesses. So sure let some of the older ones go voluntarily but make sure a well balanced staff age range is retained.

Anyway, never mind retiring their aging flight crew when are THAI going to start retiring some of their aging aircraft?

[rfukata]

this streamline measure may be long over-due for Thai airways as competition intensifies globally.

their are pros & cons always from these debates, but one good example is "SINGAPORE airlines".

Majority of the inflight cabin attendants are young; only the lead supervisors such as the purser, assistant pursers

are relatively older and the service is excellent!

[dptbkk]

I have never flown Thai as I always find their option too expensive so can only pass on my wifes(Thai) experience.

She recently flew LHR to BKK and on meeting her at Swampy she remarked how old, rude and unhelpful the cabin crew were and vowed never to fly Thai again.

That pretty much sums up TG cabin crew in my experience, and I fly TG at least once a month. Tired planes, too: big screen 'entertainment' all the way to LHR on a 20-year old 747. Nice ... I also enjoyed the experience of being offered, on the last TG BKK-LHR flight I took, a potato sandwich as a snack. Since then I've taken to flying SQ. It's a pain transiting Singapore on the way back, give that you get off a long flight and just want to be back home, but the planes are well equipped and the food / service is just so much better than TG.

Going back to the TG cabin crew, I was astonished to learn that the some of those old witches are paid around THB 100,000 a month (according to new TG President Piyasavasti at a talk he gave last week).

[M555]

I have never flown Thai as I always find their option too expensive so can only pass on my wifes(Thai) experience.

She recently flew LHR to BKK and on meeting her at Swampy she remarked how old, rude and unhelpful the cabin crew were and vowed never to fly Thai again.

Please help me is your wife very rich?

And if so she should buy you a expensive ticket.

Did you buy her the ticket?

[edwinchester]

My wife is better off than alot of Thais, that's down to hard work on her part.

I didn't fly with her so didn't need a ticket.

She flew Thai as no other option available and paid for it herself.

Never again.

[edwinchester]

I have never flown Thai as I always find their option too expensive so can only pass on my wifes(Thai) experience.

She recently flew LHR to BKK and on meeting her at Swampy she remarked how old, rude and unhelpful the cabin crew were and vowed never to fly Thai again.

never flown ryanair then?

Can't say I have ever had the (dis)pleasure but if Ryanair ever started advertising themselves 'As smooth as Guinness' I may have something to say.

[geriatrickid]

Yes experience is good, but when staff don't pay attention to changes to procedures or keep up to date, their "experience" is useless.

I have found that with technical staff, the younger ones are more open to changes to procedures and have been trained under the current formats, so they are often the ones that are up to date on procedure. Many older technical staff are of the view that if they did it a certain way 20 years ago, they can still do it that way today, even though the technique may be inappropriate.

The exception of course are the golden oldtimers that were keeping current when they were 25 and at 50 are still believers in keeping current. Dying breed, and hard to find, but any company that has a few is blessed.

[gotlost]

If they looked like this they would get more business.

[scorecard]

Ideally the flight crew should not be made up of older or younger members but a mixture of the two such that the young ones gain from the experience of their elders. That is the basis for on the job training right across the board in all businesses. So sure let some of the older ones go voluntarily but make sure a well balanced staff age range is retained.

Anyway, never mind retiring their aging flight crew when are THAI going to start retiring some of their aging aircraft?

QUOTE FROM ABOVE:

"....such that the young ones gain from the experience of their elders. That is the basis for on the job training right across the board in all businesses."

Well that's not always true.

- Thai has a very big internal organizational culture problem which is doing a lot of negative damage to their work ethic, work attitude, etc.

The absolutely last thing they need is for new staff to learn and therefore copy the old work culture.

The idea that's it's 'critical' to learn from the older Thai Inter staff is not true.

They should learn most of their work actvities in a simulated cabin/classroom where they learn responsibilities and behaviors at the same time.

- Take a look deeply into how the worlds most successful / most admired / most desired as a place to work.

Today all of the organizations which fit the above descriptions look first at attitude and behaviors, then they look at knowledge and skills.

Why? Because their is a multitude of excellent global research which has identified certain profiles of attitudes and behaviors which are present in corporations which have long-term sustained success.

I can assure you that they don't just blindly assign their new staff to older staff who possibly don't have the defined attitudes and behaviors the organization has pinpointed. All of these organizations fairly quickly move all of the staff to the new picture of behaviors or they go.