Female airlines

I travelled Jet Airways after a long time today. And in a banter with a fellow passenger, recognised one of its value propositions.

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One of the selling points for Kingfisher are air-hostesses, right? Of course, we can go on about the goody bag and the food and the tv screens, but put women in red skirts and you get male passengers. I personally don't think that all of them are model material, but I'll restrict opinion about the women to myself.

On the other side of the spectrum stands Indian Airlines. People say that it has stern looking matrons rather than hostesses. "...stern looking grumpy 45 year old Kokila at the forward section, 28 year old harassed and unhappy looking Sweta at the first class and 54 year old Matilda who works at the rear and just gives everyone a glance from back there. All three have "dont mess with me" written allover their faces!..."

I disagree with this to an extent. I think the biggest problem with Indian Airlines is consistency. Some of the best times I have had while flying have been on Indian Airlines. So have some of the worst times. As far as women are concerned, some of them are actually quite young and fetching. At the very least, most of them look genuine, instead of the fake smiles I encounter in Jet. I guess different strokes for different folks. By the way, Rajat pumps for spicy women at Spice Jet here.

However, this post is not about rating air-hostesses at all. In fact, I am against rating air-hostesses. Or rather, I am for rating stewards in the same way as rating air-hostesses.

I tried to search for ten minutes but couldn't come up with a single post on how hot some of the stewards are (or how ugly). All that turned up was this news piece on IA stewards being called to lose weight (on which the Tabloid has a different take - "IA to ground overweight air-hostesses). Why are the chick-lit bloggers shy about expressing their admiration for stewards (or critical about portly men)?

In fact, why is it that bloggers are focusing on air-hostesses rather than stewards? Why are airlines allowed to get away with blatant sexism? In fact, this is largely true for international airlines as well.

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Today, while travelling in Jet Airways, I realised how good looking some of the men are. Sahara also employs men but they do not come close to the super-models that Jet employs. While one of them had aquiline features, the other had the most dreamy eyes. Both had taut, tall gaits. Warm smiles. Enough to make most women melt (and a few men).

My fellow passenger was hooked. She called Jet "the female airlines". I agree.