Taiwan's expanding budget airline picks 40 flight crew from 1,500 applicants, with starting pay twice that of local graduates
Taiwan’s basic salary for fresh university graduates is just about US$770, but flight attendant’s starting point is up to US$1,550
About 1,500 applicants competed for 40 flight attendant openings posted by V Air , a low-cost carrier owned by Taiwan’s mid-sized TransAsia Airways, the budget airline said Saturday.
V Air held an interview Saturday for about 700 applicants who had passed the carrier’s preliminary round of screening to fill the 40 job openings.
The low-cost carrier said that less than two weeks after the airline launched the recruitment campaign, it had received almost 1,500 applicants but selected 700 to attend Saturday’s interview.
V Air said that more than 7 per cent of the 700 applicants held a master’s degree or higher, while 15 percent of them boasted first-aid skills and some of them are even currently working for hospitals.
During the Saturday interview, each applicant was given only 30 seconds to introduce himself or herself to impress the V Air executives sitting on the jury board. The juries focused on the applicants’ prompt response to challenging questions during the interview to choose 150 for an additional interview.
V Air said that the carrier now has about 70 flight attendants but due to the expansion of its destinations and fleet size, it will need an additional 40 from the latest recruitment campaign.
The carrier said that the qualified applicants are expected to join V Air starting in early May, and after about seven weeks of training, the newcomers are expected to serve the carrier’s flights before the summer vacation begins at the earliest.
At present, V Air provides direct flights from Taipei to a wide range of destinations in the region, including Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Busan, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Ibaraki and Tokyo.
In February, V Air announced it would increase the number of flights to Nagoya and Chiang Mai.
Since March 1, the number of V Air round-trip services between Taipei and Nagoya has been increased from four to seven.
V Air said that it will also operate a daily service to Chiang Mai, starting May 1, increasing its flights from four to seven per week on the route. The load factor of the Taipei-Chiang Mai flights averaged at around 85 per cent in the past year.
Taiwan’s basic salary for new university graduates is just about NT$25,000 (HK$6,000), but flight attendant’s starting point is up to NT$50,000, and big airline like Taipei-based China Airline, or even overseas Singapore Airline and Cathy Pacific even offered more than NT$70,000 per month to their Taiwanese employees.
Last year’s China Airline job fare saw more than 6,000 applicants applies 400 jobs.
Low salaries in Taiwan has also pushed more young Taiwanese seek employment outside the self-ruled island.
Taiwan appears to be rich in strong human resource talent, but it is struggling to keep them within the island’s shores. A survey by Taiwan’s job market 1111.com last year indicated that more than 70 per cent of the workforce are keen to work abroad. And the main reason for leaving is to seek better pay.
