Air India Will Start Weighing Flight Attendants — Overweight Crew Will Be Pulled From Flights Without Pay

An Air India ‘Cabin Crew Health and Fitness Compliance Policy’ takes effect May 1 enforcing weight standards for flight attendants. Air India can do ad hoc BMI checks before or after flights and during training.

• They target 18 – 24.9 BMI
  
• Below 18 and 25 – 29.9 are considered conditionally acceptable if the crewmember clears a medical or functional assessment
  
• 30+ BMI is not permitted

Underweight or overweight crew can be de-rostered and have to clear the assessment before returning. If they fail, they lose pay until they’re cleared. Crew classified as obese (30 or higher BMI) immediately de-rostered without pay, have to ndergo medical testing within seven days, and face a 30-day correction window followed by escalating warning letters if they stay out of range. The tests are done at the Air India training academy, with three attempts allowed, and some medical testing is reportedly at the flight attendant’s expense.

India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation introduced BMI-based cabin crew medical requirements in 2014. In 2022, Air India’s cabin crew union objected to BMI checks being done by “grooming associates” rather than medical professionals.

Air India says this is about healthy lifestyles, appropriate fitness, and making sure crew are physically capable of handling safety requirements. However there’s also an image component. The airline has been using new uniforms and a broader brand reset to signal that it’s no longer the old state-run Air India.

BMI is arguably a blunt and outdated proxy for actual fitness, but that largely means edge cases might feel mistreated – but those are likely to get signoff outside of the desired range, rather than being perfectly fit yet outside the 18-30 range.

Air India flight attendants have been put on blast before: shamed by a layover hotel for frequently stealing from the breakfast buffet, called out for upgrading their friends to business class, and forced to share hotel rooms. Other airlines have strict appearance standards as well,

• Malaysia Airlines actually fired a flight attendant for being 1.5 pounds overweight.

• Pakistan International Airlines required cabin crew to lose 5 pounds per month. They also adopted a rule that flight attendants had to start wearing underwear.

• Hainan Airlines re-rostered cabin crew who were 10% over the airline’s standard weight limit.

• SpiceJet only hired single women under 28.

Before the pandemic, United Airlines told flight attendants that their appearance was too sloppy.

In its early years, Southwest Airlines sold sex. That was the Love theme and not just their base at Dallas’s Love Field. In the 1970s flight attendants wore hot pants and gogo boots in a uniform designed by Juanice Muse, the wife of the airline’s first President.

In fact a Southwest Airlines legal case is the basis for a fundamental precept of employment discrimination law. In the “Love Airlines” case Southwest claimed the right to hire only attractive young women as flight attendants in order to appeal to what was then mostly male business travelers.

A federal court determined that the essence of the Southwest Airlines business was transportation not sexual allurement, so their employment policy was illegal sex discrimination. (On the other hand a business that was explicitly sexual in nature could discriminate in this way.)