Flight Attendants Grounded For Being Too Fat

Last Saturday, Turkish Airlines announced that 28 flight attendants, both men and women, had been grounded and suspended on unpaid leave until they lose weight.
“Weight and height are important factors at all airlines,” the airline said in a statement published by Turkish newspaper Haber Turk daily.  “These criteria are important both in terms of appearance and the ability to move about.”
So, certainly it’s important for flight attendants to be able to move around the aisles and perform their duties.  But the U.S. solved this problem in the early ’90s by implementing a “performance test” that enabled flight attendants to prove that they could do their jobs without being subjected to weekly weigh-ins.  Because there has been a not insignificant history of airlines requiring certain standards of beauty from their flight attendants – and firing them when they don’t comply.
In early 2009, Air India fired ten flight attendants for being overweight, and stated very openly that a large part of the decision had to do with their physical appearance, rather than their ability to do their job.  They got a lot of flak for that, however, and it seems that airlines have learned to emphasize competence, rather than attractiveness, when justifying demands like this.  That does not, however, make the demands any more reasonable or acceptable.
13/08/10 Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux/Care2