Cabin crew training week by week: SEP, first aid, the exams, the pool, and what actually gets people sent home

Finished training three weeks ago and I am writing this while it is fresh because the training threads on here are either 'it was intense' with no detail or one specific question about one exam. This is the whole seven weeks, what each block is, how the exams work and, the bit everyone wants to know, why the four people who left our course left.

Context: this is a European short haul carrier, seven week course, 22 of us on day one, 18 graduated. Every airline's course is different in length and order, but the blocks are the same almost everywhere because the regulator sets most of the content. Gulf carriers run longer, closer to eight to nine weeks, because they add service and grooming modules. The safety parts are near identical.

Week 1: induction and aviation basics

Uniform fitting, ID passes, company history, how an airline works, aircraft basics. Easy week but do not switch off. The homework starts on day two and the phonetic alphabet, the 24 hour clock and the aircraft door names are expected to be automatic by Friday. Someone was already behind by week two because they treated week one as a holiday.

Weeks 2 and 3: SEP, safety and emergency procedures

This is the core and it is where the pressure is. Doors and slides, on the real door trainer. Fire fighting with a real fire in a smoke filled cabin mock up. Decompression, oxygen, emergency landing drills, ditching, crowd control commands. You learn every door on every aircraft type you will fly, in normal mode and in emergency mode, and you practise the drill until you can do it with your eyes closed, because that is the standard.

Exam format: written multiple choice, pass mark 90 percent at ours, some airlines 88, Gulf carriers often 90 plus. Plus practical door drills, assessed individually. You get one resit on the written, usually the next day. Fail the resit and you are off the course.

What gets people here: not the content, the volume. You are learning maybe 150 pages of procedures in ten days and the exam will ask the exact figure. Not roughly how many crew per doors, the exact number. The people who passed comfortably made flashcards from day one and tested each other in the evenings. The people who struggled read the manual passively and thought it was going in.

Week 4: first aid and medical

CPR on the manikins, defibrillator, choking, burns, allergic reactions, childbirth (yes, in some detail), heart attacks, strokes, diabetic emergencies, deaths on board. Also the aviation specific stuff: hypoxia, barotrauma, DVT. Written exam plus a practical CPR assessment where you are timed and watched.

This was most people's favourite week because it feels useful in real life and the pass rate is high. Our whole course passed first time.

Week 5: security, dangerous goods and the pool

Security is done under regulator rules so I will not detail the content, but it is a serious exam and one of the highest pass marks on the course. Dangerous goods is a classification exercise: lithium batteries, aerosols, what a passenger can carry, what goes in the hold, what goes nowhere.

The pool day is the ditching practical. You wear the life jacket, you jump, you swim to the raft, you get in the raft, you help others in, you demonstrate the canopy and the survival kit. Everyone worries about this and the truth is: you do not need to be a strong swimmer. You need to be able to stay afloat in a life jacket and move about 25 metres. If you cannot swim at all, say so at application stage, some airlines will help and some will not, but do not hide it until the pool day.

Week 6: service and the aircraft

Galley, trolleys, the bar, the meal service in economy and the front cabin, PA announcements, the tablet and the sales system. For a low cost carrier this includes the onboard sales training and, yes, targets. Graded on a full cabin service role play with instructors as passengers, one of whom will be difficult on purpose.

Week 7: crew resource management, final exams and the flight

CRM is the human factors week: communication in the cockpit and the cabin, assertiveness, how accidents happen through chains of small things. Then the final exams, then the wings ceremony, then your first supernumerary flight where you are on board as an extra crew member watching and helping. Mine was a Friday afternoon to Alicante and I cried in the galley on the way back, which I am told is standard.

Why people actually leave

We lost four. Here is the honest breakdown because this is the question everyone asks.

One failed the SEP written twice. She was bright, she just did not put the evening hours in during weeks two and three and there was no catching up.

One failed the door drill practical. Froze at the assessment, could not get the commands out in order. He got a second attempt and froze again. That one was sad because he knew it, he just could not perform it under the instructor's eye.

One left by choice in week four. She realised the lifestyle was not for her once the roster examples were shown. Better to leave then than after a year.

One was removed for attendance. Late twice, then missed a day. Training is treated like operations: late is a safety issue, not a manners issue.

Nobody left because of the swimming. Nobody left because of the service week. Nobody left because they were not clever enough.

What I would tell myself on day one

Flashcards from day one, and test out loud, not in your head. Sleep. The people who stayed up until 2am cramming did worse than the people who stopped at 10 and slept. Learn your fellow trainees' names fast, you will need them and they will need you. Find the one instructor who explains things in a way that clicks for you and sit near the front in their sessions. And do not read the horror stories on here at midnight before an exam. Ask me instead.