Do you need to be able to run, lift and stand for hours? The physical requirements of cabin crew that nobody lists on the careers page
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#1 Wizz, Budapest, four years, senior cabin crew, and I want to write about the physical side of the job because the careers pages list height and reach and nothing else, and every course loses someone to a physical reality they were not warned about.
Standing
On a four sector day you are on your feet for 9 to 11 hours with perhaps 40 minutes sitting, on the jumpseat for take off and landing. The galley floor is hard. The aisle is narrow. There is no chair. If you have knee, hip or back issues that make standing for long periods difficult, this job will find them in the first month.
Lifting
Overhead bins: you will lift passenger bags that should not be lifted, repeatedly, because the alternative is a 20 minute delay. The bar cart on the A321 is heavy, and holding it on a brake during turbulence takes real strength. Emergency equipment (the fire extinguisher, the medical kit, the oxygen bottle) has to be lifted from stowages at head height. Some airlines test a lift to shoulder height at the assessment. All of them expect it.
Pushing and pulling
The cart down the aisle. Sounds nothing. Do it for 40 sectors a month and your shoulders will tell you which side you push from. The brake pedal on the cart is the thing that ends careers over ten years if you use it wrong.
The doors
The A320 door is heavy and the emergency mode drill has to be done fast. On the 737 the door is a full body movement. The training tests this and the people who are very small or very slight sometimes struggle in the drill and have to find their own technique. It can be learned. It cannot be skipped.
Heat and cold
Apron in July in Budapest at 38 degrees, then a cabin at 24, then the apron again. In January the reverse. The body copes. It copes better if you are generally fit.
What fitness actually helps
Not the gym for looks. Core strength for the lifting and the cart. Calf and foot strength for the standing. Shoulder stability for the bins. Enough cardio that a fast walk from the crew room to a remote stand does not leave you out of breath at the door. Thirty minutes three times a week of something practical is enough. The crew who do it have the ten year careers. The crew who do not have the physio bills.
Who should think twice
Anyone with a chronic back or joint condition that flares with standing. Anyone who cannot lift a 10 kg bag to head height. Anyone with a foot condition that makes a 10 hour day in the required shoes impossible. None of these are moral failings. They are the job.
If the airline does not tell you this, this thread does.
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#2 Wizz Warsaw, and the cart brake point is the one nobody trains properly. I learned to brake with the correct foot in year three from a senior who had a bad knee from doing it wrong. Learn it in month one.
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#3 Fourteen years and my back started at 35 from exactly the things Anita lists. Core strength three times a week. I have said it in three threads now and I will keep saying it.
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#4 Nursery worker applying to TUI and honestly this is reassuring, because I already stand for nine hours and lift toddlers to head height all day. The job sounds physically like mine with a cart.
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#6 easyJet Edinburgh, three months in, and the door drill was where our smallest trainee struggled and found her own technique with the instructor. Learnable, exactly as you say, but not skippable.