From purser to airline trainer: how the training department hires, what the job is, and why the best trainers are the ones who miss flying

Melbourne, 22 years of flying, and for the last three I have been in a training department, and every senior crew member who is thinking about the ground asks about training. Here is the job.

How the department hires

From the line, almost always. A purser or senior crew member with a clean record, a reputation for teaching on the aircraft, and an application when a trainer position opens. The assessment is a teaching exercise (present a topic to a group, be assessed on clarity and structure), an interview, and a review of the flying record. Then a train the trainer course, then shadowing, then your own courses.

What the job is

Delivering the cabin crew course: SEP, first aid, service, whichever block you specialise in, to batches of new joiners, and the recurrent training to the existing crew every year. Also line checks on real flights, assessing crew in the cabin. Also writing and updating the material when the procedures change. Also the hardest part: failing a trainee who cannot pass, with kindness, and telling them.

The days

Office hours, mostly. 08:00 to 17:00 in a classroom or a mock up, with a course, for six weeks, then a week of admin, then another course. Weekends off. Home every night. The line checks are the only flying, and they are flying as an observer. The body recovers. The sleep returns. The first month of that is disorienting, as Kate wrote about ground ops. Then it is normal.

The pay

A trainer salary, which at most airlines is comparable to a senior purser's basic without the flying allowances, so a drop from a good long haul month and a rise from a bad one. Predictable. Pensionable in the normal way. Not the reason anyone does it.

Why the best trainers miss flying

Because the ones who were relieved to leave the aircraft teach the procedures. The ones who miss it teach the job: the galley at 3am, the door greeting, the frightened passenger, the minute in the empty aircraft. The trainees can tell. The best trainers I have worked with are the ones who would go back tomorrow if their knees allowed, and who put that into every drill.

Who it suits

A senior crew member who likes teaching on the line, who can stand in front of 24 people, who can fail someone kindly, and who wants their body back. It is the most natural ground job for a purser and the one where the flying is still, in a sense, the work.

For crew thinking about it

Teach on the line now. Volunteer for the buddy flights with new joiners. Ask the trainers how they got there. And keep the record clean, because the training department reads it first.