Oz flight attendant’s union calls for end to ’sex object’ ads

LONDON - The Flight Attendants Association of Australia (FAAA) has called on airlines around the world to stop portraying them as sex objects in raunchy advertising campaigns.

The association said the risque airline ads were “demeaning” and that they increased the risk of airhostesses becoming victims of sexual harassment.

It cited the campaign promoted by a Russian regional airline, which garnered hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube after it showed four air hostesses stripping before suggestively washing one of the carrier’s planes dressed in skimpy bikinis.

“This type of provocative advertising using cabin crew in this light is not tolerated in Australia and should not be acceptable anywhere else,” the Telegraph quoted Jo Ann Davidson, a union official, as saying.

“Such suggestive advertising portraying cabin crew as part of the product they are selling sends wrong messages and puts cabin crew at risk of sexual harassment and abuse,” she stated.

The FAAA said it would take up the issue of how hostesses are portrayed in ads with the International Transport Federation. It blamed male airline executives for commissioning the ads in the first place.

“It is a sad reflection of the attitude of the airlines’ executives, dare I say more than likely middle aged males, towards cabin crew, in particular female cabin crew, by portraying them in such a demeaning, distasteful and irrelevant manner,” Davidson added. (ANI)