How cabin crew members perceive the risk with Covid-19

COVID-19 pandemic strike the world in the worst way infecting people very fast. Aviation authorities and governments needed to make immediate actions to prevent this disease from spreading. Lock-downs became reality and entry to different countries were banned. This way the aviation industry suffered majorly and airplanes have been grounded worldwide. Due this, many of airline employees were being laid off or working in very special conditions. The objective of this thesis was to get an understanding how the cabin crew members perceived the risk of the getting COVID-19 infection. How the cabin crew felt when going to work during pandemic. How was the situation with passengers and how was it to wear face mask at work for hours. Get an idea of the employee experience in case if this kind of crisis would happen in the future. The theoretical framework of this study consists of the concept of cabin crew´s work, risk perception and COVID-19. The research of this study was made with quantitative survey conducted online at the end of January 2021. Survey was open to every cabin crew member that was working during COVID-19 pandemic. It was distributed in few social media groups for cabin crew and shared in company X workplace in Finland as well. The results of the study show that many cabin crew members feel that the actual work has changed with the coronavirus. The time spend with passengers on board and colleagues during lay overs is more limited than before the pandemic. Employers have reduced the service onboard to prevent contacts with passengers and countries have introduced lock-downs and hotel quarantines. This all have affected the likability of the work. Many has experienced several problems wearing the face mask during long days flying. Also there has been many problems with passengers wearing the mask and obeying the new rules. In sum, most of the crew members are not too worried about their own health when it comes to COVID-19. They worry more about the whole situation at work, ever changing rules, empty planes and airports, lay offs of the staff and possible risk group family members at home after coming from work. As the pandemic is still going on, similar study could be done again to see how crew members feel after getting infected of coronavirus and how they deal with the work after that