Cabin door open for more men to join Dragonair

While employers commonly come under fire for not hiring enough women, Dragonair wants to hire more men.

As it seeks to recruit more flight attendants for its expanding Asian routes, the airline is looking for greater diversity - including men and Putonghua speakers.

"The nature of our job is to care about people," Lee said. "More gentlemen are accepting the job of a service provider."

In the past two years, the airline has seen an increase of 25 to 30 per cent in applications from men.

"It helps," said Lee, as men also "tend to be talkative, and they will [show] initiative more, to help people".

Anthony Fung Tien-wei, a senior purser who has worked at Dragonair for 13 years, said he started working as a flight attendant as he waited to hear back about a job with the police force.

Ultimately, he decided to remain at the airline because he felt the job was less personally confining and the hours were better. It's also "more chic", he said, smiling.

Being a minority meant his female colleagues often consulted him for a "male perspective" on problems, he added.

Dragonair's assistant manager of corporate communications, Catherine Sin, said people used to think of it as an industry for women. "But nowadays, things are changing, and more men are entering the industry," she said.

Lee said an average cabin crew had 15 female members and one male, a ratio she hoped would become more balanced in the future.

In the recruitment drive this weekend, Lee said interviewers would "try to in-take as many [men] as possible, to cope with the expansion plan".

Putonghua speakers are also preferred, she said, as "we have so many routes going back and forth between mainland China, and we will definitely need more people".

But while Putonghua is an advantage, Fung says applicants should not lose sight of the main language requirement, which is English. "One time I interviewed someone, and he was like, 'Oh, do I have to speak in English? Can I speak in Mandarin?'"

Fung, who won the 2009 In-flight Sales Person of the Year Award, said people who are "submissive" might not be suited to the representative nature of the job. "Be yourself. Be authentic," he said.

Dragonair was named the third most attractive employer in Hong Kong in the 2014 Randstad Award, and its parent company Cathay Pacific came top.