Cabin Crew of Vietnam Airlines: Development and Integration

On the occasion of the 50^th establishment anniversary of Vietnam’s civil aviation industry, Ms Nguyen Thi Minh Ha, head of the Cabin Crew of Vietnam Airlines, has expressed the achievements of her division in the past as well as the tasks of her division in the future.

The Cabin Crew of Vietnam Airlines was set up in June 1993 following the split of Flight Group 919. Our head office is at 115 Hong Ha Road, Tan Son Nhat International Airport, Ho Chi Minh City and our northern branch office is at 200 Nguyen Son Street in Gia Lam Airport, Hanoi. As for the attendant population, two thirds are working in the south and the remaining third is working in the north. We now have 1,497 attendants, including 1,037 stewardesses, and 528 of them have passed tertiary education.

 

In the initial days, our division encountered great difficulties and over half of our then staff were soldiers and air guards, who lacked professional knowledge for new tasks. In the past years, the Cabin Crew had applied a lot of measures to consolidate and build up its affiliated organisations in order to meet and carry out missions designated by Vietnam Airlines. We issued new regulations, applied new management processes, trained new stewards and stewardesses, opened regular training courses, upgraded ourselves to be able to serve on such modern airplanes as B777, B767, A300, A321 and A320, examined to categorize attendants to have plans for supplementing new knowledge for the weak, taught new foreign languages beside English and recruited new senior and experienced attendants. We also sent good staff abroad to acquire new knowledge to be able to act as head attendants, teachers, supervisors and assessors.

 

Being a unit responsible for serving air passengers, the Cabin Crew of Vietnam Airlines always actively strives to fulfil all business plans designated by Vietnam Airlines, especially those concerning the increase in the air route exploitation and the flight frequency. The flight hours of our attendants are 1,331,760 hours in 2005, six times higher than those in 1994 with 223,251 hours. The attendant workforce of Vietnam Airlines usually received commendations from various organisations, especially the Party and the State leaders.

 

Apart from our preset functions of serving passengers and exploiting flights, we also actively take part in social activities. We have financially supported 14 Vietnamese heroic mothers, presented saving books for offspring of martyrs, taken care of heavily wounded soldiers, built two houses for people who suffered great losses during the war, raised funds for victims of natural disasters, visited people and soldiers in far-lying regions and others.

 

With our outstanding achievements, many units and individuals of the Cabin Crew have been awarded various titles and prizes such as “Strong and Clear Party Unit” and “Third-class Labour Medal.”

 

 

A successful flight is contributed to by all units of Vietnam Airlines from the leadership to professional departments and other units. Air stewardesses, who are under the direct management of the Cabin Crew, are mainly responsible for serving passengers. Air stewardesses represent Vietnam Airlines on all flights to bring the best services of Vietnam Airlines to passengers. At present, when Vietnam enters more deeply into the world economy, the completion of the civil aviation sector is becoming fiercer. Vietnam Airlines air stewardesses must increase their efforts to improve service quality for passengers in order to meet their increasingly high requirements and to cooperate with others to maintain the reputation and existence of Vietnam Airlines in both domestic and international markets.

 

To have good quality flights, the Cabin Crew of Vietnam Airlines pays great attention to the human quality in all its units. All attendants are quite young when they apply to work for Vietnam Airlines. All of them will be trained carefully. They will not only serve key needs on airplanes but act as messengers for Vietnam, who bring Vietnamese values worldwide.   

 

Currently, apart from fulfilling their tasks of serving the needs of passengers on the airplane, Vietnam Airlines air attendants play active roles in introducing beautiful Vietnamese images to both domestic and foreign passengers. In order to accomplish this task, air attendants have to experience many systematic training courses, which may last from their early working period until their retirement.

 

After being employed, an attendant must experience professional training courses lasting 6-9 months. The most important courses are flight safety, first aid, serving skills, communication skills, flight information and aviation English. Each year, 200-300 new attendants are recruited and trained. In the years past, thousands of attendants have been trained in flight safety, serving skills and flight information. Each year, some 300 attendants will be retrained to be able to work on B777, B767, A321 and A320 airplanes and some 400 attendants will be upgraded.

The Flight Information Subject supplies sufficient knowledge and information about the land, culture, people and landscapes of locations Vietnam Airlines’ air routes reach. The attendant workforce will also be given further knowledge through annual or periodic courses. These courses also have various types of teaching. For example, learners are required to collect information and pictures of locations Vietnam Airlines reaches and then present them before the class as a tourist guide.

 

As is known, with favourable conditions, Vietnam as well as the aviation industry is growing quickly. According to assessment of Skytrax, a world prestigious airline appreciating and ranking organisation, airlines in Southeast Asia in particular and Asia in general are among the world’s best. Vietnam Airlines is near to world-leading airlines like Cathay Pacific Airways, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways International and Malaysia Airlines. This is both an advantage and a hardship in market competition and business products.

 

The Cabin Crew of Vietnam Airlines is under high-pressure competition. Therefore, it has always to improve itself to compete with regional rivals. With improvements, passengers will never turn their back on Vietnam Airlines. Vietnam Airlines will have to try more to be a world leading airline.

 

As a unit member of Vietnam Airlines, the Cabin Crew always requires its staff to devote their whole hearts to their jobs and acquire new knowledge to provide high quality service for passengers. At any moment, we always take the trouble to train and retrain attendants, especially the spirit and attitude of “The smiles of air attendants are always open and friendly to passengers.” Attendants will help and provide the best individual needs for passengers in a professional and impressive manner, especially for passengers flying Vietnam Airlines for the first time or passengers wanting to learn about the land and people of Vietnam or seeking business opportunities in Vietnam. Besides, we also learn from experience in professional service provision from our direct rivals and then make them adaptable to Vietnamese cultural characteristics to serve our customers.

We hope that Vietnam will be successful in developing a human resource rich in quality and high in volume for the national development in the international integration process.
Van Luong