Love Island star Lucinda Strafford may be most remembered for her appearance on the hit reality programme in 2021, but the 22-year-old had a career as a British Airways flight attendant before moving into the villa.
Today’s Brighton-based British beauty has more than 824,000 followers on her Instagram profile @LucindaStrafford and is a successful boutique owner and YouTube creator.
Lucinda worked as a flight attendant for a year prior to her meteoric rise to stardom, but she felt the position “wasn’t as glamorous as promised.”
For many years, Lucinda’s mother worked as a cabin crew, but according to the influencer, she discovered that the position no longer fulfilled the same standards.
Not everything about working in the sky is a positive.
The gorgeous influencer said: “I did find the uniform requirements very strict.
“I felt it was frowned upon if you had to go up a size, so you just tried your best to keep the same uniform you’d always have.
“It’s SO hard to maintain your weight when working as cabin crew as you’re always surrounded by food and you eat at unusual hours because you need the energy.”
Lucinda added: “When you land you never want to work out because you’re so tired.
“I know it’s a usual thing to put on weight when working as cabin crew. I remember when I started people would say you won’t stay that skinny forever!”
And, Lucinda noted that office managers would sometimes measure the crew’s skirts and put a strike next to your name if the uniform wasn’t “100%”.
She added: “When you were on airport standby, I’d be by the offices of the managers, and when you would walk past some of them would measure your skirt and if it was too short they’d tell your manager in charge of you and you would have to get a new size.
“You weren’t allowed to wear any bracelets, and I remember my friend was wearing a Cartier one that she couldn’t take off for a flight unless she had a certain tool, and she got really told off and had a warning.”
She added: “My least favourite was short-haul. Because I flew from Gatwick I was mixed fleet, because at the time there wasn’t a fleet that just did long-haul.
“Getting up at silly hours in the morning was not for me, especially having to drive to Gatwick Airport and drive back the same day later on.
“The days are actually longer as well because you had to go there and then clean the aircraft, well we didn’t clean it, and then would have to go back as well on the same day.”
While it’s sad to hear this opinion from one of our more than 10,000 world-class cabin crew members, a British Airways representative told Daily Star that the airline offers a highly competitive compensation and benefits package that compares favourably with those of rival carriers.
Although there are universal requirements, the airline observed that skirt length is not measured.
In addition to meals provided for flights, other personnel at Gatwick clean the aircraft prior to takeoff.
