Qatar Airways’ flight attendants can’t be married?
According to a Washington Post blog post, that used to be the company’s hiring policy for female flight attendants.
However, according to an update on the blog, Qatar Airways flight attendants no longer have to be single or remain single to be employed by the airline. The blog post stated that according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, flight attendants must be single when hired and must remain single for at least five years after being employed or get permission to marry.
The punishment for marrying before the five year limit? Termination and possibly deportation. The post alleges that most of the airlines’ employees are foreigners who are allowed to live in Doha because of their employment with the airline.
Rossen Dimitrov, Qatar Airways Senior Vice President of Customer Experience, contacted the blogger and said that the above mentioned policies are not actually the policy of the airline. Presently, employees must only inform the airline of pregnancies in accordance to Qatar’s civil aviation regulation.
The Daily Mail claims that Emirates flight attendants who get pregnant within the first three years of employment must resign.
Whether the policy changed or was never actually the case is a question that the blogger is seeking to get answered.
If Qatar Airways does/did have such a policy, what are your thoughts on it?
With all the “Open Skies” hub-bub about US airlines competing with the Middle East airlines, the debate has mostly focused on government funding. However, the discussion about fair competition should also include minimum ethical requirements that every airline needs to follow (government funded or not).