The Datum Report

Occupation 6213 · Caring, leisure and other service occupations

Air travel assistants

Half of full-time air travel assistants in the UK earn more than £28,738 a year, and half earn less.

Air travel assistants issue travel tickets and boarding passes, examine other documentation, provide information and assistance at airport terminals and look after the welfare, comfort and safety of passengers travelling in aircraft.

How people enter it

Entrants usually possess GCSEs/S grades. Fluency in a foreign language may also be required in some posts. Training typically lasts between 3 to 6 weeks followed by a 6 to 12 month probationary period of on-the-job training.

What the work involves

• receives passengers at airport terminal, examines tickets and other documentation, checks in luggage and distributes boarding passes
• checks emergency equipment, distributes reading material, blankets and other items, and ensures that the aircraft is ready for the receipt of passengers
• welcomes passengers on board the aircraft, guides them to their seats and assists with any hand luggage
• ensures that sufficient stocks of meals and beverages are on board the aircraft prior to take off and serves passengers during the flight
• sells duty-free goods during the flight
• makes announcements on behalf of the pilot, demonstrates the use of emergency equipment and checks that safety belts are fastened
• directs and instructs passengers in the event of an emergency, ensures safety procedures are followed

Also called

Air hostess · Cabin crew · Customer service agent (travel) · Flight attendant · Passenger service agent

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for air travel assistants, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 4 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Leisure and travel service occupations n.e.c. · Rail travel assistants · Sports and leisure assistants · Travel agents