Male flight attendant trend is taking off in Japan
- For years, young women have dominated Japanese airline flight crews, but times are changing
More men are taking jobs in the traditionally female-dominated profession of Japanese airline cabin crew as smaller airlines actively look to distinguish themselves from their large domestic rivals.
The increasingly physical nature of the work in combination with the growing need to deal with unruly or drunk passengers, mean soradan (airmen) are being seen in the skies above Japan in larger numbers.
Koichi Ito joined Star Flyer, a medium-sized carrier based at Kitakyushu Airport in Fukuoka prefecture, as a flight attendant after working in a hotel. The 38-year-old said when he was a student he was impressed with the male flight attendants he saw on foreign carriers.
“They were cool,” he said. “I wondered why Japanese airlines employed only female cabin crew,” he said.
In considering some possible advantages of being a male cabin attendant, helping passengers put away and take out their increasingly bulky carry-on luggage, among other more physical tasks, came to mind.