In this answer about crew bidding/scheduling, it's mentioned that crews may be divided into groups based on personality.

What personality traits may be considered? How are people matched? Is this common around the industry?

  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Will have you an answer by tomorrow, there are 7 groups, the criteria will I look up. This is a ME3 carrier $\endgroup$ – Brilsmurfffje Jun 15 '16 at 22:04

I spoke to my friend at the one of the ME3 carriers. She tried to find any information regarding this matter but was not able to find it. However during your recruitment process you have to perform a personality test and based on this test you are placed in one of the total of 7 groups. During the scheduling they combine people from different groups so that there is a balanced and workable crew on board. Say that you're in group 5, then you will for example mostly work with people that are in group 1 and 3.
Questions on this personality test are like:

  • Would you rather (example: clean a room or work within a group)
  • Which statements best describes you? (leader, selfish, friendly, etc, etc)

These airlines are run on performance optimization and care less about human values.

  • 4
    $\begingroup$ They group crews with like personalities? Great, I just got on a plane where all the cabin staff answered selfish to the 2nd question. Guess I can forget about getting a bag of peanuts. :/ $\endgroup$ – FreeMan Jun 17 '16 at 12:26

I suspect most large airlines use seniority for bidding and schedules. Certainly most North American airlines do.

When using seniority it is impossible to assign flights or monthly schedules based on personality. Many bidding systems can allow an individual to request to not fly with an individual crew member, but this is still constrained by seniority.

In rare cases management may intervene to separate individuals who have extreme personality conflicts.


Your Answer

