‘I don’t know why you want to be a glorified waitress, a trolley dolly’ – said my mother

Name: Ashleigh Daly (flight attendant)
Age: 20

Ashleigh, pictured right, from Juffair has been working as a flight attendant for the last two years. She joined Gulf Air in April of this year and last week returned to Ireland for a position that pays her triple her current salary

How has the job changed since you started?
The job itself hasn’t really changed; it’s the industry itself really.
Everybody seems to be cutting down. Wages are lower and there are a lot of six months contracts now instead of full time/ permanent places.

Have you had to deal with the whole ‘trolley dolly’ image?
Yes! Oh my goodness, yes. Even from my own family.
A lot of my family are in the airline industry and I’ve always wanted to do this so when I left school I went to college to do international airline studies and my mum wasn’t really happy, she kept saying: “I don’t know why you want to be a glorified waitress, a trolley dolly”, but she doesn’t really know the hard work that goes into it.

Do you think there is any truth to the fact that many airlines are trying to push some of their older staff out to make way for younger meat?
Yeah. Back in Dublin with Aer Lingus you still see a lot of mix between old and young but with a lot of the English airlines they’re all really young.
Over here you have to be 20 to fly but over in Europe it’s 18. And Gulf Air has now lowered the maximum age for recruiting. It’s 32 now but it used to be 40 then 35.
The American airlines start at 22 but you never see any young attendants – the old have got the monopoly (laughs).

What do you like about the job?
I could never do an office job. I’m not a nine-to-five kind of girl. I have to be out doing something, meeting people of different nationalities, travelling.
It’s not glamorous like people think, not at all but you get to meet people from all over the world, I have friends everywhere from Mexico to Canada and Italy. It’s great, if I ever want to go somewhere I know there are people who’ll look after me.

What do you hate about the job?
It’s so tiring! You might be well rested on the ground but when you go up 38,000 feet up in the air you’re body changes, you swell and bloat with the pressure.
You feel really tired and then add to that the time difference.
I mean India is two-and-half-hours ahead, how strange that? When you get there your time clock is all over the place. You get up at three in the morning to do a shift and you find yourself eating dinner at like seven in the morning.
You put on loads of weight also. I think I’ve put on about two stone since I’ve been here. It’s tiring and in this heat especially it’s really hard. You just sleep and eat really and they work you up to 14 hours at a time.

What has the job brought you that you may not have had if you’d taken another career path?
Confidence. I’m bubbly and outgoing but there was no way I’d have been able to stand up in front of 250 people and do a demonstration or anything.
I’m usually one of the only native English-speaking crew on the flight so I have to do a lot of the announcements but when I first started I had to stand behind the door in the toilet so I couldn’t see the faces of the passengers I was talking to – but now I don’t care, I’m not bothered by it at all.
I never used to walk out the house without make-up but now I don’t have a problem with walking down the aisle with loads of passengers and no make-up. I even do karaoke now and I don’t even need a drink first either (laughs).

What have been the highs of your job?
The hotels that Gulf Air puts us up in are amazing, they really are.
The crew are a bunch of nice people and we get to go to some really nice destinations even though they’ve cut down on a lot of the really great ones like Johannesburg, Singapore and Sidney so myself and a lot of the new crew haven’t been able to do those but I’ve been all over India, Muscat and all that and it’s always top of the range hotels.
For example, when the crew fly to Dublin they stay in the only five star hotels there so that’s really good.
Also, you get a lot of discounts and stuff here from the clubs, bars, riding and scuba diving and all sorts.
We get really good perks; 26 days a year annual leave, free medical and dental all on base.
We get transport and laundry for the uniforms is done for free and for our own clothes you can get a really big bag done for about 900 fils. We also get really great accommodation which is fully furnished with cleaners that come in and do the housework. In my building there’s a swimming pool on the roof and we have a sauna and gym. They really look after us.

What have been the lows?
Delays are really not fun and when you see your roster at the beginning of the month there’s no point taking much notice as they’re going to change a lot anyway.
Because a lot of crew are leaving now you know when you’re on standby that you’ll be going somewhere.
Also pay-wise, a lot of airlines give you a certain amount of money for meals and stuff when you’re away but Gulf Air adds it to your pay cheque at the end of the month so you can go somewhere, especially at the end of the month, and find that you haven’t got much money for anything.
And it’s always the same amount regardless of whether the country you’re going to is a lot more expensive. If you get a couple of dinars and you’re in London where a lasagne and chips is £8, it’s coming out of your own pocket.  

What are the promotion opportunities? Pay scale?
Well at the moment with the company you can work for six months and get promoted but all the new crew are in economy.
All the senior crew are Bahraini and Moroccan. But working for Gulf Air looks really good on your CV because they’re really well-known for their training.
If you go for a job and they see you’ve worked for Gulf Air they’ll snap you up like that (click of the fingers). As for the pay scale, when you’re in training you just get a meal allowance of BD70 every two weeks but when you finish your training you get your basic salary which is BD214 and then it goes up to BD220 when you start flying plus whatever extra you get for the flights you do and overnight pay.

How do you go about applying for the job?
They always advertise really well when they’re recruiting so it’s easy to apply and the people who recruited me were really nice. Then you go for a seven-hour interview process where they make you do role play to see how good you are standing up in front of people and that kind of thing. You have to do a 10 year background to make sure you don’t have a criminal background.
A lot of it is about how we look. I have tattoos but they’re not visible so it’s OK but a friend of mine who is stunning and a really good cabin crew was turned down because she had a scar on her ankle from an accident and they said that because we wear tan coloured tights it would be visible. I also know of people that have been turned down because they have a mole on their face (like Cindy Crawford) which is a bit unfair considering I know of a Bahraini guy who has a huge ugly mole on his neck and they didn’t have a problem with that.

What is the training process?
It’s really hard actually. Most people don’t know that we have to go through 10 weeks of training on five different aircraft.
We do two weeks first aid training where we learn how to deliver a baby or splint up a fracture. You have to know every single piece of safety equipment on board. It’s really intense.

Would you recommend the job to anyone thinking of joining?
Yeah. If you’re outgoing and want to travel and meet lots of people you should but if you’re shy then it’s not the job for you – especially if you have problems getting to know people.
Someone as big as Gulf Air means that you can train with people and then never see them again. But it’s a great job and if you’re the right kind of person you can have a great time.