Vistara introduces male cabin crew to become 'equal opportunity employer'

Vistara airline on Thursday announced it has introduced its first male cabin crew as part of plans to be an "equal opportunity employer".

The crew took to the skies following the completion of a rigorous three-month safety and service training programme to the exacting standards of Tata and Singapore Airlines, the airline said in a statement.

"Our total crew strength at present is around 500, and as we continue to scale up, we expect to have about 25-30 per cent male crew of the total strength over a period of time," said an airline spokesperson.

The airline also unveiled an elegant uniform for its male cabin crew, designed by celebrated designer label Lecoanet Hemant.

"We are an equal opportunity employer, and it has always been our intent to have male cabin crew once we reached a certain scale of operations where we could efficiently roster and deploy mixed crew," said the airline's chief strategy and commercial officer Sanjiv Kapoor.

Like the airline's female cabin crew, the male cabin crew will deliver Vistara's brand promise of providing seamless excellence to our customers, he said.

The second and third set of male crew are in training, and will soon join the first set in the air.

Vistara has flown over 8.5 million customers till date and serves 22 destinations with over 730 flights a week, operated by a fleet of 19 Airbus A320 aircraft.

Apart from Vistara, Air India, Jet Airways and SpiceJet have mixed cabin crew.