Industry Questionnaire Seeks Key Cabin Crew Traits

Symbiotics, an online aviation psychometrics and human performance company and SkyPeople Training, a CAA and EASA regulated Cabin Crew Training Organisation, have joined forces to launch an industry-wide questionnaire to establish a better understanding of assessing cabin crew competencies – the results of which will be made available later this year.

Working together, the parties hope to help airlines better recruit and train cabin crew based on understanding and measuring the key traits and knowledge that make all the difference in the role.

Having both recently attended a conference focused on cabin crew competencies hosted by CAA's Flight Crew Human Factors Advisory Panel, highlighting the importance of both non-technical competencies and knowledge in the role of Cabin Crew, the parties have teamed up to collaborate on finding out what the industry recognises as ‘good’ in real-world operations. This will support measuring and assessing competencies from the start of a cabin crew’s journey and throughout their career.

Whilst the ICAO Cabin Crew competencies from 2020 provide an international framework as a starting point, there is more that can be done to measure and train underlying competencies - what really drives excellence in the real-world?

Cabin crew recruitment, training and management teams can get involved and complete a short online questionnaire to help determine the most important non-technical traits that can best predict and enhance performance in the cabin crew role.

Hannah Davies, Director of Strategy and Growth for Symbiotics comments “Cabin Crew need to stay calm in stressful and pressured situations but also be assertive to deal with challenging situations, not forgetting being able to convey empathy in dealing with passengers. Added to this, they require self-discipline to complete training, and strong situational awareness to manage the cabin amongst a host of other qualities! We want to better understand how we can assess non-technical skills to ensure that the industry can recruit and retain the top talent needed to support the considerable growth expected across the sector over the next 20 years. We want to work with the industry to ensure that we continue to support that growth in line with the drive to implement CBTA for cabin crew. This questionnaire provides a great opportunity for the industry to share experience and knowledge in shaping how we look to support CBTA from as early as possible from attestation training through to assessment, recruitment, promotion and beyond.”

Emily Hooker, Learning & Development Manager at SkyPeople Training adds “We have been working closely with universities, colleges and airlines exploring how as a Cabin Crew Training Organisation we can bridge the gap between education and industry. This exciting collaboration with symbiotics will enable us to gain a deeper insight into psychometric testing and explore how we can strengthen our products and services we provide to our airlines and the Cabin Crew Community even further.”

Click here to take part. The questionnaire closes on 18th April 2025.