Can you have a Cabin Crew career AND have a family?

Finding a balance between work and family can be hard for any parents juggling children and a career, but for cabin crew there are even more complications.
Here are some of the key things to consider:

Travel

You won’t just be going into your office a few miles away, you could be flying all over the world, away from your little ones. How would you feel about that?

Absence

Depending on your schedule you might be away for several days at a time, waiting for your return flight. This might be hard on you and your little ones, especially if they are going through a clingy phase.

Childcare

You won’t always be in a position to drop your child off at school or nursery in the morning and collect them at the end of the same day. By then you could be on the other side of the world!
So, does this mean that it’s not possible for parents to be cabin crew? Or should you pursue this career until you decide to have a family then accept that you need to give it up? Of course that is an option, but it’s not necessarily a forgone conclusion.

There are many benefits of this lifestyle and plenty of ways to make the demands manageable:

• Time away from your kids also means there will be plenty of time when you are there for them. You may miss some school pick-ups or parents evenings, but chances are you will be around for a lot more of the day to day of your child’s life than someone with a 9-5 job might.
• Travelling to a distant location might be heart-wrenching for you the first few times, but your kids are far less likely to be troubled by this. Once you are out of sight it probably doesn’t really matter where you are, and particularly for young ones, the concepts of being ‘down the road’ or ‘downtown LA’ are fairly inter-changeable!
• Children of most ages can be fickle. They may seem distraught that you are leaving if the mood takes them, but return with a present from your destination and it will be a differently story!
• There is no doubt about it, you will need help to meet your childcare responsibilities. Whether it is your partner to be consistently available for pick-ups and drop offs, or grandparents to help out with unexpected sick days or party invites, you and your children will need to get used to lots of people being involved in their upbringing. From their perspective, it will probably more the merrier. it can’t hurt to have too many people to love them, care for them and be very involved in every aspect of their life. Each child adapts remarkably to the situation they find themselves in.
• Whatever your job, if you are happy and fulfilled then it will have a positive impact on your family. if you are stressed or conflicted you are more likely to snap, be impatient, or generally less emotionally able to meet their needs. So it’s not really selfish to consider what you need to feel satisfied in your life and career because it will be to their benefit as well.
• Your children may well miss you when you are away for a few days and of course this will be hard. But they will get used to it, and with phone and skype/ facetime calls you needn’t seem that far away.
• A career with an airline can offer great job security and a steady salary with extras to compensate for days away. This will give your family security and if you’re lucky, a bit extra for days out and treats.
• There are travel perks to most cabin crew jobs which means that you will get to take your family on trips that will be the envy of their school friends. It may even ignite a passion for travelling in them, and lead them to all sorts of adventures when they are older.

Case study

Here is what one of our course community shared about being a mum and cabin crew:
“I’m a mother and also cabin crew. I’ve been working for Ryanair for almost a year and a half and I have a 2 year old daughter.
I only do short haul which is great but at the same time my lifestyle is way far from “a normal mother” and my constant changes of schedule impacts directly on my daughter : being one week on earlies, the next one on latest and so on… Makes hard for me to keep her on a routine but my mom looks after her while I’m at work and she helps me a lot.
I’d say, without my family I wouldn’t be able to do it. My mom and her dad are such a big help!
Sometimes I come back home too late at night and I can’t spend time with her but I try to compensate that time during my 3 days off.”
Mariana