Source: People's Daily Online Author: 03/20/2009
Subject Concerned: Aircrew Airlines Human Resource
In order to improve services and meet the demands of the constantly increasing number of Chinese passengers, Japan Airlines (JAL) has employed a large number of Chinese flight attendants, according to reports released by Kyodo News.
Thanks to the deepening interdependence between the Chinese and Japanese economies as well as frequent communications between the people of the two countries, two large Japanese airline companies have expanded their China operations.
JAL began recruiting flight attendants in China in 1995. At the very beginning, the company only hired nine individuals. However, as the number of Chinese passengers increased, the number of Chinese flight attendants also increased, with already 165 employed at present. They can be found on every JAL flight between China and Japan.
The flight attendants were recruited by JAL in Shanghai and are mostly college graduates who majored in Japanese. They receive strict training for several months in Japan before starting service.
Zhou Lei, who started working at JAL after graduating from college in 2006, said, "The training was very strict. Aside from studying Japanese, we spent most of our time learning safety and service procedures, in the hope of offering our passengers whole-hearted service with a smile."
According to JAL, the company carried 760,000 passengers on its China route in 2000, but the figure sharply increased to 1.98 million in 2007. The number of Chinese passengers is constantly rising and now already accounts for around 20 percent of their total passengers.
With the increase of Chinese travel abroad, Oda Kazuhiko from JAL's China Business Promotion Department said, "To better serve Chinese passengers, JAL has now also arranged for more Chinese flight attendants on flights to the US and Europe."