Emine Onur and Muhiddin Balçın received their BA degrees from Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Türkiye, in the field of English language teaching in summer 2023. In this paper they engage in a dialogic reflection about their decision not to start working as teachers but to launch their careers as flight attendants. Emails: emineonr.80@gmail.com; muhiddinbalcin@gmail.com

 

The idea of becoming a flight attendant instead of becoming a language teacher

Emine: Actually being a flight attendant was in my mind from high school years on. At first, when I was just a teenager, the sky meant a lot to me: freedom, happiness, eternity. And I couldn't imagine anything more exciting than working in the sky! I have always admired aircrafts, their mechanics and their power. Besides, I knew that working in aviation means travelling and exploring the world all the time. As a person, a life without experiences and learning is complete emptiness. And when we become professionals as young people, we feel so much time and energy in our lives. So I thought that becoming a flight attendant could bring me both a life full of experiences and a career that I could pursue my whole life. Now I'm flying all over the world, always learning something new, meeting hundreds of people in a day. And after all these things, when I get home I can say "I did my job". I love this dynamic life which keeps me in the moment and doing my responsibility, my job at the same time!

Knowledge is power, teaching it is even more powerful. I love teaching. It is fun and also knowing that you raise a generation is even more exciting! I did this job at several schools both during my practicum and as side jobs during my studies. But what I expected in life is much more different. When you work as a teacher in a school, you stick to that place, sometimes you conduct the same lesson several times, so you go through the same thing again and again. But for my personal choices, working in the sky, always flying to different destinations, always working with a different crew even on the same day is more refreshing and exciting. Of course there are pros and cons of both professions. For example, sometimes we don't have time to see our loved ones or even don’t find time for ourselves to just sit down and relax. It is such a busy job. You come home from a 7-hour flight, you sleep for eight hours and eat something just to get ready for another 10-hour flight. And sometimes flights don't go as you expected so that you can't end your shift at home. However when you work as a teacher your day is scheduled, your shift is proper and the working day won't last longer. Everything goes as you planned while my job isn't that way.

It is only fair to state that the economy is another important factor while choosing your profession. Put simply, a flight attendant earns more than a teacher.

So, it depends on what a person expects from life. Mine is an adventurous and dynamic life: I see my job as a lifestyle rather than a job routine between 8 and 5.

Muhiddin: Actually, I did not have the dream of becoming a cabin crew member. My adventure of becoming a cabin crew member started one night when I was sitting in my living room and received a notification from a job posting website that I was already registered on. This notification made me do research on the lives and challenges of flight crews, which I had no knowledge of before, but being curious I took a step in this direction by applying to this advertisement. The more I did research about this job, the more interested I became.

At that time, I imagined myself active in the teaching profession, as I was going to complete my studies as an undergraduate student enrolled in an English language teaching department. However, when I learned that a person with a teaching education could also apply to become a cabin crew member, and when I then became a cabin officer, I started to make plans on this path. Much later, after passing some interviews and evaluations positively, I completed the professional training required for this job for a few months and became a cabin officer.

 

What makes the job of a flight attendant different from that of a language teacher?

Emine: My job offers me more than a teaching job. I fly to some spots of the world, stay at a 5-star hotel, enjoy that place, learn its culture and then get paid well for doing that. Of course my job in the sky is not without risks, there's always a danger. We even see deaths and births, we fight with fires and sometimes save someone's life on board. That's risky compared to a teaching job. But when you calculate pros and cons I can definitely say that this profession has offered and will offer me a lot of memories.

Muhiddin: The opportunities that my current job provides me are more diverse than those of the teaching profession. Flight attendants, first of all, travel around the world! It is much easier to get visas for most European countries and transoceanic countries such as the United States compared to a teacher. Moreover, the financial benefits are better than teacher salaries, at least in the future, and it can be a little easier to lay the foundations of your life by doing this job at a young age. In addition to all these advantages, it is very motivating to travel and collect memories in every country, to get to know and see different people and different cultures, to see and visit the historical places of those countries and to have this as part of one's job. While doing this job, I make a lot of use of my pedagogical training, which is inherent in the teaching profession, because understanding people and responding to people's needs as part of my job can be really difficult and tiring on long flights. At such times, I can take advantage of the university education as I understand people who are mostly from different cultures. The skills I gained at university help me engage in communication with people in the plane at an altitude of 33 thousand feet to the maximum. It is easy for me to help passengers with their needs. Each flight has its own passenger dynamics, and understanding and helping the psychological state of each passenger is actually part of my job: a passenger may have lost a relative and may be going to see him or her, or may be going through difficult processes in his or her life; thanks to my training, at some point, it becomes easier for me to understand such passengers and I can help them to some extent. 

 

I would definitely recommend that people who want to become cabin crew members should do a deep research and learn the details of this job, because being a cabin crew member means not only being responsible for the food of the people on the plane, but also being responsible for their safety and health. In fact, as an example, in the plane crash that took place at Japan Haneda Airport in January 2024, thanks to the outstanding performance of the valuable cabin crew, 379 people could be evacuated from the plane without even a nose bleeding, and it would be wise for people who are considering doing this job to know these professional demands and act accordingly.

 

Looking ahead

Emine: Will I do this job until I get retired? I don't actually know. I’ve just started this career and I don't know what life will bring me or take away from me. For now I'm definitely determined to pursue this career, but I'm also afraid of the idea that I'm no longer excited or healthy enough to do this job. When I get to that point, teaching will be my main career. Life is unpredictable, maybe I'll miss teaching and I want a settled life. So I can't say that I'm done with my teaching profession.

Muhiddin: Despite all the good sides of my current job, from time to time I can't stop the feeling of being a teacher in my dreams because being a teacher has a completely different and beautiful feeling, especially after intense and long hours of flights, I question myself about what it would be like if I were a teacher because I have received teacher training. Being in the classroom with children makes me feel good and I think I would have a more organised life. Being a cabin crew means doing many different jobs at the same time, so it can be difficult to focus on one thing and it can be tiring to deal with many things at the same time, whereas in teaching, it is probably much easier to focus on dealing with students compared to a cabin crew member. If not now, but in the future, after accumulating good memories in this job and getting my professional satisfaction, I definitely want to teach at some point in my life. With the experiences I will have gained as a cabin crew member, I definitely want to pass on the cultures and natural beauties of other countries first hand to my future students so that they can look at life from a different perspective and maybe find their own way better. 

 

Please check the Pilgrims f2f courses at Pilgrims website.