Photo: Snapshot from the official WeChat account of Shandong Airlines
Shandong Airlines recently announced the uniform changes for its flight attendants: female staff can choose pants or knee-length skirts and flat shoes will replace high heels, making the company one of several Chinese airlines that requires female flight attendant wear flat shoes, instead of the usual high-heels, while working on the plane.
According to media reports, Spring Airlines issued a notice that beginning July 7 this year its female flight attendants would be allowed to wear flat shoes throughout their duty period. Last year in August, Hunan Airlines also fully implemented the high-heel free policy. And Juneyao Airlines followed suit by providing both high heels and flat shoes for flight attendants to choose from, but required them to wear flat shoes while working on the plane.
Beginning this year, numerous Chinese netizens have posted photos of their handwritten suggestion cards for airlines and screenshots of suggestions submitted to railway departments, where they proposed to change the uniforms for female flight and train attendants by replacing high heels with flat shoes, and short skirts and high-slit skirts with trousers, as well as eliminating the requirement of wearing stockings and makeup, Hongxing News reported.
"Many TV dramas depict flight attendants like this, wearing short skirts, stockings, and high heels, while pulling a flight case," said former flight attendant and stand-up comedian Xiha, whose real name is Li Yongqiang, Hongxing News reported.
Xiha said that from the perspective of comfort and safety, wearing stockings is inconvenient. In the event of an emergency on the plane, such as a fire, the material of the stockings is highly flammable.
In the future, more and more female flight attendants might appear before passengers in flat shoes as wearing high heels during work greatly increases the risk of sprains and slips, exacerbates varicose veins and skeletal strain, and turns hours of standing and moving into an unavoidable work burden, CCTV News said in article in July.
According to the regulations of the Cabin Operations Management issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China on December 7, 2024, cabin crew should not wear high heels during the period from the start of the aircraft's taxi until the passengers have disembarked at the destination.
Global Times