the jobs of the flight attendants could also be terminated

In what has been an extremely controversial case a court in India has found in favour of the state owned company Air India and allowed it to ground any flight attendants who are overweight. Air India had told the air hostesses that they were only to report for ground duty after failing to meet physical fitness regulations set by the airline.

The high court of Delhi in its summing up noted that the jobs of the flight attendants could also be terminated if they continued to put on weight and to ignore the requirements of the job. Mr. Justice J.R. Midha and Mr. Justice A.K. Sikri said that state run airlines had to compete with privately owned firms around the world and this was putting pressure on them to perform and therefore they could not relax rules for personal considerations of the flight attendants.

The judges also noted that there were considerable health implications with overweight people which could mean that the flights attendants were not able to do their job and it was important that they could move around the airline quickly in the case of a crisis.

Cynics of this ruling said that Air India are just trying to get rid of the older air hostesses who have worked for the company for many years and who are no longer physically attractive and replace them with young pretty women. They claim that these “physical fitness regulations” are just a cover-up for the real intentions of the airline.

Statistics show that good looking and thin people are far more likely to be employed than overweight people who do not make an effort with their appearance. Ukmedix News is also aware that in the United Kingdom there is no actual legislation which prevents employers from discriminating against obese job applicants. If you are overweight or obese you are statistically lowering your chances of getting employed and while you may feel that this is very unfair and discriminatory there is very little you can do about it except to get fit and lose weight.