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Whenever people think of working for an airline, the first thing that comes to mind is the possibility of either working as a pilot or as a steward/stewardess. In the real sense though, the airline industry is broad, and there are numerous other opportunities for work within the industry. You certainly don’t need to be a pilot or an air hostess to work in an airline. In fact, we dare say, regardless of your professional background, you can get a job in an airline! To buttress that argument, we will be looking at 10 types of jobs you can apply for in an airline:

1. Engineering jobs: airlines tend to have robust engineering departments, with opportunities for many people to be hired. The first (and rather obvious) category of engineers who are hired by the airlines is that of aeronautical engineers. These are the folks who are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the airplanes flown by the airlines are in good mechanical condition. Now aeronautical engineering is a sub-branch of mechanical engineering. But airlines also tend to have opportunities for other types of engineers – especially electrical/electronic engineers and civil engineers. So, in a nutshell, if you have engineering qualifications, and you want to work for an airline, there may be opportunities waiting for you. You just need to visit any airline’s website, specifically the ‘careers’ page, to see the opportunities that are currently available.
2. Legal jobs: airlines tend to have legal departments that deal with the various legal issues that arise on a day to day basis. This means that if you have studied the law, and you have always wanted to work for an airline, there may be opportunities for you. Even if you are not an attorney, but you have paralegal qualifications, you may still be able to find a job within the legal department of an airline.
3. Marketing jobs: pretty much every airline worth its salt has a vibrant marketing department. Airlines tend to go to great lengths, to lure the best marketers into their marketing departments. So this means that if you have solid marketing skills, and you have always yearned to work for an airline, there may be an opening for you somewhere.
4. HR management jobs: like all other types of organizations, airlines usually have HR departments. These departments are run by folks who have qualifications in human resource management. And this, by inference, means that if you are a qualified HR practitioner, and you wish to work for an airline, there may be a vacancy for you somewhere.
5. Accountancy jobs: a typical airline will tend to have a finance/accounting department, and this department can only be staffed with folks who have finance/accounting qualifications. Thus, if you studied accountancy/finance at college, yet you had always wanted to work for an airline, you don’t have to lose hope. With the right finance/accounting qualifications, it should be possible for you to soon or later find a job in an airline.
6. IT jobs: airlines have, over the years, embraced information technology in all their operations. They therefore tend to have very vibrant IT departments, where you can apply for a position if you have the right qualifications. Then you can go ahead to work as a systems analyst, programmer, database administrator, data entry staff, IT support staff… or anything else for an airline.
7. Medical jobs: if, for instance, you studied nursing or some other related medical course, you can find an opportunity to work for an airline. Remember, most airlines endeavor to have nurses in all their flights, and if you have requisite training in that area, an airline may want to hire you as part of the flight crew.
8. Clerical jobs: just like all other organizations, airlines tend to hire various types of clerks in their departments. You may find yourself working as a ticketing clerk, HR clerk, stores clerk, dispatch clerk… and so on. Therefore if you have the basic qualifications required to be a clerk (which nowadays include superb computer skills), it may be possible for you to get a clerical job in an airline.
9. Driver jobs: not all airline jobs require you to have a college degree. It may be possible for you to get a job at an airline with your driving license as the only qualification! This may, for instance, be a position where you get hired to be driving the airline’s executives to and from work! Or it may be one where – with a little additional training, you are hired to drive the airline’s ground support equipment.
10. Manual jobs: even if you have absolutely no skills, it is still possible for you to find a manual job at an airline. For instance, airlines often have positions for porters, and these need no other skills, other than the ability to lift, load and unload stuff from carts. Therefore, if you have always wanted to work for an airline, but you have absolutely no skills, there may be still be an opportunity for you to take up such a basic/unskilled position within the airline.

Of course, on top of these ‘support’ jobs, there are core aviation jobs that can be applied for – including the piloting and air steward/stewardess jobs we made reference to earlier. The problem tends to be in the fact that only so many people have what it takes to become pilots and air stewards/stewardesses. With regard to the pilot jobs, one of the challenges is usually in that one has to pass rather challenging aptitude, psychometric and medical tests, to get those jobs. It also doesn’t help that the fees for flying courses tend to be so hefty. On the part of air stewards/stewardesses, the challenge tends to be in the fact that only the most attractive people (physically) are offered those opportunities. Yet most people out there are ‘average-looking’, to put it mildly… Therefore if the airline industry was limited to pilots and stewards/stewardesses, very few people would manage to work in the industry. But, thankfully, as we have seen in this article, there are numerous other opportunities to work in the aviation industry. And this means that pretty much anybody who wants to work in the aviation industry can apply for a job there – especially in those other ‘support’ positions.

Many people assume that working for an airline is a joyful affair all the time. And whereas there are definitely some benefits in working for an airline, it is worth noting that there are challenges too. Therefore anyone seeking to work in an airline needs be aware of the challenges as well. The problem here is in the fact that many people who seek to work for airlines focus only on the benefits. They don’t stop for a moment to think about the challenges of working for an airline. If the challenges of working for an airline were as well known as the benefits, there would probably be fewer people applying for airline jobs. There certainly is some sense in anyone who is considering working in the airlines industry to be aware of the both the benefits (joys) and the challenges of working for an airline. Only then would they be in a position to make an informed decision on whether to proceed to apply for the airline jobs.

Without further ado, the challenges of working for an airline include:

1. Irregular work schedules: airlines usually operate on 24-hour basis. This means that most of the people who work for airlines have to be under the shift system. You may have some folks doing a shift that runs from 6 Am to 2 Pm. Then you have others doing a shift that runs from 2 Pm to 10 Pm. And you have yet another shift running from 10 Pm to 6 Am, and the cycle repeats itself. Now this can be either a benefit or a challenge, depending on how it is implemented. Where the staff are allowed to select the shifts that they are most comfortable with, it is a joy. But where the management selects shifts for the employees — or where it keeps alternating the employees between the various shifts — it becomes a challenge. Either way, it is important to understand that most things in the society we live in are designed with the assumption that ‘most’ people work on a 9 to 5 basis. Therefore to the extent that an airline job forces you to work outside this 9 to 5 framework, it is bound to (soon or later) prove to be a challenge.
2. Regular travel: many of the jobs in airlines require regular travel. This, in practical terms, means that one often has to be away from family (and from other personal affairs) for long periods of time. Thus whereas one may enjoy the regular travel, the implications – in terms of being away from family and other personal affairs – can turn out to be a challenge. It doesn’t help that the ‘regular travel’ often entails going across time zones, and in the process messing up with one’s sleep patterns. In the long run, this can have unpleasant implications on one’s health/appearance.
3. The challenging nature of the work: the airline industry is one where very high standards have to be maintained at all times. This means that the people who work in the industry have to work very hard, in order to maintain the high standards. And this in turn means that the airline work (whatever position you are employed in) is very challenging. It is very easy for someone who is used to mediocrity – or someone who is coming from another industry where things are ‘slower’ — to feel that the work in the airline work has too much ‘pressure’. Indeed, it would be inadvisable for anyone who is not used to pressure (or anyone who can’t handle pressure) to seek a position in the airline industry, because chances are that they simply wouldn’t cope.
4. Lack of job security: most of the airline nowadays seem to prefer hiring people on contract basis. This means that people who yearn for the job security that is associated with ‘permanent and pensionable’ positions may not find it in the airlines. In fact, for the support positions, some airlines nowadays don’t hire employees directly. Instead, the outsource the work to certain companies, which in turn find the people to do the work. This is the case, for instance, for the staff who do things like cleaning at the airlines’ offices, the porters, those who operate the ground support equipment… and so on. It doesn’t help that some jobs in the airlines specifically demand ‘youthfulness’. This is case, for instance, with regard to the air hostess/stewardess jobs – which, for the most part, seem to be reserved for ‘pretty young things’. This means that once one is hired for one such position, they have just a few years (a decade at most) to hold the job, before the next generation of ‘pretty young things’ comes to take over. Then we have to recall something we see often in the press: that such and such an airline is firing so many thousand staff (usually at a go). It means that working in an airline is really a ‘one day at a time’ affair – for the job security that exists is very little.
5. Unrealistic societal expectations: just because you work for an airline, people expect you to have lots of money at your disposal. And just because you work an airline, people expect you to be living a certain lifestyle. The pressure to keep up with the societal expectations can be too much for some. Things are made worse by the fact that the earnings of many of the people who work in the airlines earn are, in actual fact, considerably less than what the society imagines they earn. And yet some airlines expect their staff to live in certain neighborhoods, drive certain cars, wear certain outfits… you know, just to maintain the corporate ‘image’. This can translate into too much pressure on the part of the people who work for the airlines.

So it is important for the people who are aspiring to work in the airlines to be aware of these challenges. The aim is not to discourage people from seeking to work in the airlines. The aim is to get them to have the right perspective, while seeking to work for the airlines. The aim is to get them to understand that, in certain ways, working for an airline is a challenging affair.