When do WE rest and eat?
Hello all
I work for one of the UK charter airlines as cabin crew, and it is fair to say I am VERY irate about the following:
Show me ONE 9 - 5, /office worker / cleaner / even overworked doctor, who would play HOLY HELL at being on their feet for 8 - 12 hours solid, without a designated rest period, let alone without having at least one uninterrupted meal
THIS is what we crew have to put up with. We don't have any allocated rest periods, (unless we work for BA), and we barely get time to eat, even on a longish short sector, TFS for example, or on longhaul - (definately NO chance on a Palma!)- we just 'pick' at food, (if we're lucky)
Try telling the flight deck that they cannot have time to eat, and all hell would break loose, but it's expected of us. OK - the no1 might say in a briefing, "make sure you have a break and eat", but we all know it rarely happens.
Cabin crew are suppose to be there primarily for safety - how can we enforce this when we are all knackered and hungry, as well as run off our feet. (After all, without us, there would be no passengers, and no flight crew would have a job anyway!)
WE should campaign for proper rest periods,
a lot of us are now in the Cabin Crew 89 union, and this should be an urgent issue.
I know I am most definately not alone in this - countless crew have complained. It's time the job was brought up to basic standards for everyone - as I've mentioned above, this has conotations on safety, as well as comfort.
Do others at PPRUNE agree?