India: Airline to stop hiring male flight attendants to "cut fuel costs"

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2013-06-29 21:26

Story here. Excerpt:

'An Indian airline known for lower fares is reportedly instituting yet another way to keep costs low — ditch heavier male flight attendants in favor of an all-female crew that will be lighter to transport and therefore save fuel.

Times of India reported 40 percent of GoAir’s 330 flight attendants being male. With women generally weighing 30 to 45 pounds less than males and it costing about 3 rupees ($0.05) per hour per extra pound to fly, the airline expects to save up to 30 million rupees (around $500 million) each year in fuel through the new hiring practice.
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In addition to hoping for savings by reducing the weight of the flight crew, other cost-saving measures De Roni noted were reducing the size of inflight magazines, filling water tanks less and using only one engine during taxiing.'

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They wouldn't've dared do this if for some reason men were, on avg., lighter than women. They'd still find an excuse to hire only female flight attendants. I wonder if, since on avg. women are lighter than men, and the Indian Army must spend a lot of money on fuel to move troops around, will it follow this example and only recruit females as soldiers from now on? Should not the US Army perhaps do the same too, now that budget cuts have kicked in?

Don't know much abt Indian law, but really, is this new rule legal in India? Pretty sure this'll find it's way to an Indian court. The easy way to avoid the mess this airline has now made for itself would've been for them to implement a maximum weight limit or height/weight ratio limit for new attendants that was gender-blind. But no. They had to mess up.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-06-29 22:08

This is a slippery slope.

I saw that one airline was charging passengers by weight (In Fiji, I think). At first I was like "okay, seems fair" but then when I thought about different races of people, some are bigger than others. Then it suddenly didn't seem so fair. Black people would have to frequently pay for two airline seats and Asian people would rarely have to.

BTW - I run into stuff like this all the time, especially for "child rates" cuz my kids are big. My 8 year old is 4'10" and 115 pounds (I'm, 5'10 and his dad is 6'8").

As far as cost of necessities, a large person will always cost more than a smaller person as they eat more, shit more, need larger clothing, take up more space, etc. But a larger person is also capable of more physical work. Gender and race are a pretty good indication of peoples general size. I'm not sure how I feel about charging for individual size when it comes to services such as airfare and things like that. but I think for employment, size discrimination should definitely be off limits in order to be consistent with our employment laws.

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Submitted by Kris on Sun, 2013-06-30 06:01