Because it wants to save money on lodging bills for cabin crew on overnight layovers, the restructured version of India’s Jet Airways will not hire male flight attendants when it resumes operations.
Flight attendants will be forced to share hotel rooms as part of the airline’s cost-cutting measures.
Hiring both male and female employees would put the airline in danger of having to pay more for individual rooms.
Jet Airways filed for bankruptcy in 2019 due to a mountain of debt, but investors are trying to restore the once-popular and well-regarded airline with a new hybrid strategy.
On Tuesday, Sanjiv Kapoor, the airline’s new CEO, announced on Twitter that male cabin staff would be hired only after the airline had reached a particular operating scale in order to “optimize hotel costs.”
When asked how not recruiting male cabin crew would save money on lodging bills, Kapoor admitted that flight attendants would have to share rooms.
Air India devised a similar cost-cutting technique in 2018, but it is the exception rather than the rule for other foreign carriers.
Jet Airways intends to compete in India’s very competitive aviation market by introducing a hybrid model that includes a full-service Business Class cabin at the front of the plane and a low-cost Economy class with buy-on-board food and drink. The airline intends to obtain a pilot’s license in the coming weeks and begin flights as early as July.
According to Kapoor, Jet Airways will be the first airline to be resurrected in history. He was previously the chief operating officer at Vistara, a Tata-backed airline where males were barred from working as cabin staff until 2018.
According to Kapoor, Vistara had always intended to hire male cabin crew but had to wait till the airline grew to a particular size before doing so.
