I Watched British Airways Cabin Crew Training From 1987 Then Remembered My Own

By Mr Plane Guy, Plane Honest Travel and Loyalty Insights

So I fell down a bit of an aviation rabbit hole. I came across an old BBC documentary showing cabin crew training at British Airways back in 1987 and honestly, it is brilliant.

It follows trainee crew going through the full process, safety drills, service training, and all the bits passengers never see. Some of it is fascinating. Some of it is unintentionally hilarious. And some of it feels like a completely different world.

What Cabin Crew Training Looked Like in 1987

The first thing that hits you is the tone.

What cabin crew training looked like in 1987 The first thing that hits you is the tone.

It is very 1980s. The commentary, the way trainees are introduced, even the language used, it is something you just would not see now.

There are moments that feel completely out of place today, especially around how people are described and what is considered normal.

Different time. No question, but underneath that, the core of it is familiar. Safety drills, emergency procedures, service training, learning how to handle passengers.

That part has not changed as much as you would think.

Then it hit me, I had been through it myself. Watching it brought back memories of my own training. I trained with Monarch Airlines in 1998, training was at Luton airport and it was intense.

My Own Cabin Crew Training at Monarch Airlines

We had a DC10 slide rigged up to aircraft steps in a car park in Luton for evacuation drills. No fancy simulators like today. Just a very real, very physical setup.

Six weeks of intense training. Full days from 0700 to 1700. Up at 0400 then going home and revising until 2200 Every day and all for about £600 a month.

When I joined Monarch I was initially trained to work onboard their DC-10 aircraft, my first ever flight was Gatwick to Las Vegas in 1998, I was then trained to work on an MD11 which was leased in from World Airways for summer 1998 and summer 1999, flying off mostly to Orlando Sanford and sometimes, Cuba, The Dominican Republic or Barbados. Then in 2000 I had to start operating short haul flights and was trained on the a300 and 757 along with the brand spanking new a330. In 2002 I was promoted to a cabin manager on an a320 based out of Edinburgh! However, short-haul wasn't for me and a year later I left and joined Virgin Atlantic.

This is the part people do not always realise. You did not just learn the material in the training manual, you memorised it. Verbatim.

Safety drills, commands, procedures, everything had to be word perfect. The location of every piece of safety equipment, all 16 oxygen bottles. If it was not, you would be pulled up on it. I can still recount my airbus a300 drill for landing on water. And the debriefs were brutal. I still remember being called out for not offering to carry bags for female crew members!

Joining Virgin Atlantic Changed Everything

And the shift was obvious straight away. Virgin Atlantic had a completely different mindset

to Monarch which was strict, structured, procedural. Virgin was more about brand, experience, and personality.

You were still trained on safety, but there was a big focus on how you made passengers feel.

I always joke we were slightly brainwashed into the Virgin way of doing things, but that was the point. It was about delivering something different. The strangest full circle moment

Here is the part I did not expect. That Virgin Atlantic training centre in Horley is gone now and somehow, I recently bought a house built on that very training centre!

Watching that 1987 footage, and thinking back to my own training, there is a clear split.

What has changed is the shift and focus on culture, diversity and inclusivity, customer expectations, and brand .What hasn't changed is safety is still everything. Emergency drills are still intense, the responsibility is still huge and the pressure is still very real

That part of the job has never gone away.

What this means when you are flying today as a passenger, you do not always see what goes into this. You see the service, the smiles, the food and drinks, but behind that is a lot of training, repetition, and responsibility.

It is also why the experience can feel very different between airlines.

Final Boarding Call

That BBC documentary is a fascinating watch.

Part nostalgia, part reality check, but for me, it was also a reminder of how much goes on behind the scenes, and how much of it has not really changed. Different era, different expectations. But the core of the job is still exactly what it always was.

Let me know in the comments below, if you would like more blogs from my crew days, honestly I have so many stories I could write a book!

Hello, I’m Paul a professional jet-setter and all-around plane travel pro. After 15 years working in and around planes, I became a flight delay expert at a London Airport and mastered plane travel hacks, a PLANE flight expert with BIG travel plans but small carry-on.

Now, I share PLANE travel news, tips, reviews, and deals with honesty, humour, and zero baggage! Thanks for reading I Watched British Airways Cabin Crew Training From 1987 Then Remembered My Own.

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Airport lounges, free upgrades, travel chaos and the occasional meltdown. Real travel, not influencer nonsense.

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