Challenges and Opportunities after Working as Filipino Flight Attendants in Local Airlines: Input for an Empowerment Sessions for Tourism Students

Abstract

This study investigates the different challenges and opportunities encountered by Filipino flight attendants, who used to work with local airlines, to create empowerment sessions for tourism students who intend to be flight attendants but will later find themselves transferred to another field. The notion behind the empowerment sessions was guided by empowerment theories, in general. The researchers interviewed via an emailed list of questions guided by the research questions Filipino flight attendants who worked in a local airline until saturation was reached at five participants. The narratives from the participants were textually and thematically analyzed to surface themes relevant to successful career shifting among flight attendants. Focal areas of development were identified from the narratives and themes and mapped in a matrix aligning them with existing courses in the Tourism Management curriculum of St. Paul University Manila, and the relevance of those courses to flight attendants before, during, and after their career in the airline industry. The study found that there are different challenges awaiting flight attendants after they leave said careers. Some encountered the challenge of looking for other kinds of jobs in a different company, how to adjust to their new, and how to deal with new responsibilities in a different field as a supervisor or entrepreneur. The study identified ten focal areas of development that could be cultivated in empowerment sessions within existing General Education and major courses of the said degree program. The study recommends that the same mapping should be done in all programs to empower students from any discipline at any point during their formation in the university and to optimize the value of academic courses in the lives of students.   

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijhss.12.4.1