India's national airline, Air India, has come under fire after sacking ten female cabin crew members for being overweight. The crew had their employment terminated from the carrier's domestic arm, AI Domestic, this week, after being declared 'medically unfit for duty'.
The air hostesses (as they are still called in India) had appealed to Delhi's High Court against the decision to ground them for being too fat, but lost their case. The Bench pointed out that in the highly competitive industry of civil aviation, the company has to focus on the personality and physical appearance of its employees. "Statistics reveal that overweight persons face constant challenges to their emotions which include remarks from strangers, discrimination at work, lower self-esteem and poor body image," the judge said.
"Now, if you are just ten grams over, it’s goodbye,” Sheila Joshi, 51, one of the hostesses, told the press. "It’s ridiculous: weight is not an infectious disease. This is not a modelling job; we are not working a catwalk."
The maximum permissible weight for an 18-year-old and 152cm tall airhostess is 50kg while one between 26 and 30 years of age of the same height has a limit of 56kg.
Female cabin crew allege that male pursers, who also work the aircraft cabins and who face the same physical challenges as the female hostesses, are not made to conform to a particular weight standard. "Last year, an obese flight purser got stuck in the aircraft toilet and its door had to be dismantled to free him," an air hostess told the Times of India newspaper. "We have male flight pursers who weigh over a hundred kilos. If there is an emergency on board they would hamper the rescue operations rather than help it," said another.
What do you think? Does the appearance of an airline's cabin crew matter to you or do you think this kind of attitude belongs in the last century? Have your say using the comments form below:
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