Crew room politics: the cliques, the old guard, the new joiners, and how to survive a base without picking a side
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#1 Turkish Airlines, and every base I have known has had the same social structure: the old guard who remember a different airline, the middle years who run things, the new joiners who are terrified, and the two or three people who somehow float between all of them. Let us talk about the crew room as a social system, because nobody prepares you for it.
The old guard
Twenty years plus. They remember when the uniform was different, the rosters were better (they were not), and the management was worse (it was). They are in the crew room corner with their own coffee. They are, mostly, the best crew to fly with and the worst to be new around, because they have seen a hundred new joiners and they will not learn your name until you have lasted a year.
The middle years
Five to fifteen years. The pursers, the trainers, the people who know how the roster actually works. This is the group with the power and the group with the politics: who gets the good trips, who is recommended for the course, who is in the WhatsApp group that matters. A new joiner who is adopted by one of them has a different first year.
The new joiners
Everyone who has been there less than two years, who sit together, who share the fear, and who are simultaneously the most fun group in the building and the most likely to be gossiped about. The friendships from this group are the ones that mostly fade, as another thread said, and the two that stay are the ones that stay.
The floaters
The crew who are friends with everyone and in no group. Usually funny, usually kind, usually the ones who organise the leaving drinks. Every base has two. They are worth more than they know.
How to survive without picking a side
Be pleasant to the old guard and do not try to be their friend, it happens when it happens. Learn one middle years crew member's name and ask them one good question. Stay in the new joiner group and do not badmouth it. Never say anything in the crew room that you would not say on the crew bus, because the crew room and the crew bus are the same room. And be a floater if you can. If you cannot, be near one.
What is your base's structure, and which group are you in now?
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#2 Same airline, different base, same structure. I am middle years now and I did not notice the transition, it happened the day a new joiner asked me a question in the crew room and I knew the answer. That is the promotion nobody tells you about.
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#3 Old guard, apparently, and I resent it and it is accurate. I do sit in the corner. I do have my own coffee. And I do learn the names after a year, because after a year they are real. It is not unkindness. It is arithmetic.
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#4 Krakow, 18 months, so still new joiners in theory and middle years in practice because the base is young. The floater at ours is a Portuguese guy who has been at four airlines and is friends with all of them. He organises everything. We would collapse without him.
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#5 @purserpaul it is arithmetic. That is the kindest explanation of the old guard I have heard and I am passing it to the new joiners.
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#6 US base, and the structure has a seniority number attached, which makes it explicit in a way that European crew find strange. Old guard is literally a list. Middle years is a range. New joiners know their number and it is a large number.
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#7 Three weeks in, new joiner, and I have identified the floater at Edinburgh and I am standing near her. Instructions followed.