For the life of me, I can’t work out how to open the damn aeroplane door from the inside. I’ve been shown three times by easyJet cabin crew trainer Dilyana. I’ve watched four members of the public manage it easily. Yet when I eventually pull the right combination of levers, I forget to hang on to the handle on the wall. The door swings outwards, nearly taking me with it, before the emergency slide would have had time to inflate. If this were for real, might I have plummeted to my death?
Thankfully, I’m at the easyJet London Gatwick training facility, and this is just a test run – I’m learning how to be a member of the cabin crew. “Ninety-nine percent of the job is the safety of the passenger, the crew and the aircraft, one percent is customer service,” says easyJet talent acquisition manager Selina at the welcome talk. But as my monstrous lack of competence shows, I’m 100% unsafe at best. EasyJet, you see, has launched a new “returnship” initiative to encourage more over-50s to become cabin crew and is hosting a taster day – which I’ve attended in my best orange tie, and with ID in case I need to prove my age – to demonstrate why the job could be perfect for quinquagenarians.
It’s tempting. We know that more than a third of over-50s feel at a disadvantage applying for jobs. A Flexible After Fifty report urged ministers to avoid a “looming retirement crisis” with measures to help more over-50s back into the workforce. We have experience, common sense, we’ve met a........