Originally Posted by
Lima Juliet
Chugalug2 from that quote above, then you would imply that the primary role of cabin crew above all others is passenger safety? I would argue that is a secondary role and that the primary role is passenger service, comfort and ensuring the passengers are compliant for the journey ahead......
Finally, I have flown many flights as a passenger in an aircraft too small to have Cabin Crew, or with too few passengers to require Cabin Crew, so if the aircraft can fly without the Cabin Crew and complete its desired mission what does that really say about the importance of the job or their effectiveness to me? Personally, I would be content to fly on a flight in any aircraft without Cabin Crew as a passenger if everyone else knew what to do and behaved like me. So really, that primary role is passenger service, comfort and ensuring the passengers are compliant for the journey ahead and the rest is secondary effect.
As for MAA definition, they also mentioned the dreaded ‘B Word’ until recently until someone put in an amendment to change it. The definition of Aircrew can also easily be amended. They are, after all words with variable context (but the context is the important bit).
LJ, you make my case far more persuasively than I ever could and for which I must thank you. I leave your comments quoted above (edited down only to make their thrust the more apparent) to speak for themselves. As to you finding yourself minus cabin crew in small aircraft, the same applies for civilian aircraft. The ratios of cabin crew required v pax numbers v a/c type are spelled out by the CAA. I am sure that they are similarly spelled out by the MAA. If it were not so then passengers would be advised to board with copious amounts of change to operate the many vending machines bolted to the cabin bulkheads!
I most certainly do repeat my claim that the primary role of cabin crew is passenger safety. Passengers left to themselves to evacuate a crashed and burning aircraft would die in their droves, be they military or civilian. A speedy but orderly evacuation can only be achieved by trained cabin crew manning the exits and ensuring a continuous flow of pax down the slides. Practice, practice, and yet more practice is the key, an experience not open to their pax of course.
Knc linked us to the bravery of BOAC's Mary Jane Harrison who gave her life aged 22 saving her passengers evacuating the inferno of a B-707. The only peacetime George Cross awarded to a woman (posthumously in her case sadly). I would also mention the MBE awarded (in life!) to Dan-Air's Elizabeth Cowe, whose HS 748 ditched on take off from Sumburgh, in assisting 26 of her passengers to safety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan-Air_Flight_0034
KD, you have my sympathy. If it is of any consolation, the British Army was always a known unknown to me. What ever I learned by rote of Companies, Battalions, Corps, Regiments, etc, etc, required for passing promotion exams, was soon forgotten. Thank heavens though that HM Services differ so wildly. Long may they do so!
