Calendar Bares Out Flight Attendant Pay Concerns

A dozen Air Comet flight attendants have posed nude for a calendar to draw attention to their plight.  The calendar, numerous excerpts of which appeared in the Spanish media shows the Air Comet attendants, all female, posing provocatively in and outside airline cabins, and in one case on top of a jet turbine (those interested can search “Air Comet calendar”).

“We are just demanding our rights to receive what is ours, we each have eight or nine months of unpaid salaries,” attendant Adriana Ricardo, who appears in the calendar, told Reuters.

Reuters notes that the airline, run by the embattled chairman of Spain’s main employers’ association CEOE, Gerardo Ferran, filed for administration in December after a British court impounded nine of its aircraft at the request of German bank HSH Nordbank.

Some 1,200 copies of the calendar are being sold over the internet for 15 euros (you can order via email to act.azafatas@gmail.com).   

The UK’s Daily Mirror reports that the airline, which had tried and failed to create a niche in the market by offering cheap flights to South America, owes creditors an estimated 160 million euros, approximately five of which are thought to be unpaid staff wages.

Other Incidents

And there are reports that a group of Aer Lingus flight attendants on the TransAtlantic route are considering following the Air Comet example as a way of drawing attention to recent staff lay-offs. 

It’s not the first time such an attention-getting move has been deployed, of course.  Back in 2005, a group of current and retired United Airlines flight attendants came up with a similarly “provocative” means of highlighting the plight of their pensions (see Calendar Exposes Pension Plight).