The service training module nobody warns you about: the tray angles, the wine pour
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#1 JAL purser, nine years, and I run the service module at the training centre some weeks. The training threads on this forum are SEP, fire and pool, and the service week gets a line: 'then the service block'. At the premium carriers the service week fails more trainees than the fire week and nobody writes it. Here it is.
What the service module is
At a premium carrier (the Japanese, the Asian, the Gulf, the legacy Europeans in their own style): the meal service sequence per cabin, the tray handling (the angle, the placement, the two handed service), the drinks and the wine (the pour height, the label, the presentation), the announcements (the script and the tone), the greeting and the farewell, the grooming applied under observation, and the role play with instructors as passengers who are difficult on purpose. Graded on a full mock service.
Why it fails people
Because it cannot be memorised. The SEP exam is numbers and sequences and the flashcards work. The service is the body: the hands, the posture, the face at hour ten of the simulation, the recovery when the role play passenger refuses the meal. The trainees who did the SEP in their sleep sometimes cannot do the tray with a smile and a straight back while the instructor asks them a question. It is a physical and emotional skill and some people need more weeks than the course has.
The role play passenger
The instructor who complains about the meal, who asks for something not on the menu, who touches the trainee's arm, who speaks too fast, who will not stop talking. The trainee is graded on the recovery: the warm and firm Layla described, the escalation Matthew described, the face that does not change. The trainees who argue with the role play passenger, or freeze, or laugh nervously, are the ones who are marked.
The JAL specific
The omotenashi module Hiroshi described: the anticipation practised until it looks natural. The bow, the eye line, the two handed everything, the silence that is not awkward. Foreign readers find it elaborate. The Japanese trainees find it the hardest week because it is the one they thought they already had.
What passes
Practice with a partner, as with the drills, but of the body: the tray walked around the flat a hundred times, the pour practised with water, the greeting said to the mirror until the face is right. And the attitude: the role play passenger is the passenger in row 1 next month and the recovery is the job.
For trainees at the premium carriers
The fire week is frightening and most pass it. The service week is quiet and it is the one to practise at home. The instructors are watching the hands and the face, and the hands and the face can be trained, by you, in the kitchen, every evening.
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#2 JAL, and Keiko ran my service module nine years ago and the tray walked around the flat a hundred times was her instruction then too. The service week is the hard one at JAL. The fire is a day. The service is a life.
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#3 SIA, and the service block at SIA is the long one and the one the audits later measure. Keiko is right that it cannot be memorised. The body learns it or it does not, and the body can be taught in the kitchen.
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#4 Qatar, and the business course role play passenger is the service week's cousin and the best actor in the training centre, as I wrote. The recovery is the grade. Keiko has the premium carrier service week exactly.
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#5 Emirates, and the service block was the week I found hardest after breezing the SEP, and nobody had warned me because every training thread is about the fire. This thread is the warning.
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#6 Trainer, and at the low cost carriers the service week is shorter and fails fewer, but the role play passenger exists at every airline and the argue or freeze or laugh is the mark at all of them. Keiko has written the premium version of a universal week.
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#7 SIA, Malaysian, and the kebaya bending technique the seniors teach is the service week's body learning continued on the line. The training starts the body and the galley finishes it.
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#8 Emirates from Cairo, four months on the line, and the service block was the one my batch cried in, not the fire. The tray angle at hour ten of the simulation. Keiko is right about the kitchen practice and I wish I had read this in week 4.