Originally Posted by
Vag277
Manwell
You clearly do not understand why there are cabin crew. Their primary role is passenger safety and that is why their numbers are specified in regulation. Their primary role is NOT to pander to you.
vag, on the contrary, you do not know enough history about cabin crew to know why they were employed in the first place. Their role was to attend to pax needs - basically to serve them like waiters in a restaurant. Much like they still do for pax up in first and business.
It was only much later that they transformed from customer servants into customer safety dictators, and the whole concept of their role being primarily pax safety is unable to be substantiated in the real world. That's the one we actually live and die in when our thinking gets too far removed from reality.
Yes, their numbers are specified in legislation, which should imply the following - If something is a practical necessity it wouldn't require legislation mandating it. You are correct that the justification for legislating cabin crew is based on a safety argument, but that argument conveniently perceives only a very small part of the whole picture. In reality, airlines survive by selling seats. If an airline is considered safe, but provides such poor cabin service that pax get pissed off, the airline can fail. Conversely, if an airline provides great cabin service, but get a bad safety record, they'll lose patronage and potentially fail. Therefore, the primary safety role is managed by the person occupying the front left seat, and the primary customer relations role is managed by the cabin manager. Both are essential for airline profitability, but one accident would have a far greater effect than one bad cabin service. That's how it works in reality. Anything else is folly dreamed up by fools who have allowed themselves to be deceived, usually for personal gain.
Probably the most critical factor in failures of any kind, whether they be airlines, societies, or simple pilot error, is folly and self-deception. That doesn't mean an airline, society, etc. will immediately fail as soon as their thinking becomes flawed. These things take time, providing plenty of opportunity for fatal flaws to be corrected. History shows that once a society, company, etc. pass a certain critical point, the possibility of correction is unlikely. Hence, the adage, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."