The wellness of airline cabin attendants: A systems theory perspective

Abstract

This article reports on the wellness of selected cabin crew members at a South African airline. The aviation industry introduces a great amount of potential environmental stressors to cabin crew. The purpose of the research was to explore the wellbeing of cabin crew and the stressors related to their working environment. As primary safety officers on board an aircraft, cabin crew perform a vital function. In order to provide a world-class hospitality service to passengers, cabin crew need to be in an optimal state of physical and psychological wellness. A systems theoretical perspective formed the framework of the study. This approach provided a comprehensive description of the personenvironment transactions. A qualitative research approach was the chosen method of inquiry and purposeful sampling fitted the rationale of the study. In total, 12 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with cabin crew members at their offices. Content analysis was conducted in 3 different phases, where each phase was progressively more complex and abstract. During the first-order analysis the researcher constructed 18 coding categories. The next phase constitutes the second-order analysis where 8 pattern categories were identified, describing the relations between the coding categories. Finally, the third-order analysis presents a conceptual analysis, indicating how the various coding and pattern categories were integrated and how they relate to the general concepts of a systemic epistemology.

The findings of the study indicated that the stressors that cabin crew experience are all related to the disruption of personal meaningful regularities or patterns. It seems that as humans we have a need for a certain amount of regularity and predictability, a certain “lawfulness” in our world. The migratory lifestyle of airline cabin crew introduces disrupted circadian rhythms, disrupted interpersonal relationships as well as disrupted cultural patterns. Based on the findings, recommendations for intervention strategies were made. These included psycho-educational workshops to cabin crew and the introduction of limited flying periods to reduce the long-term effects on their physical and emotional wellness.