Air India has issued new guidelines on grooming for its flight crew. In an effort to improve the company’s image, the Tata-owned airline has asked its crew to adhere to new guidelines which include dying grey hair, shaving hair when suffering from male pattern baldness or balding patches, and not wearing black and religious threads on the wrist, neck and ankle.

The guidelines are part of Tata’s campaign to upgrade Air India’s status in the aviation market. The company is working on upgrading its fleet as well as improving service levels. Tata hopes to increase its market share to 30 percent in domestic and international routes over the next five years. The airline currently has a 10 percent domestic and 12 percent international route market share in India.

Apart from asking the male crew to shave, the airline has said that the crew cut is no longer permitted. The new guidelines also asked male crew members to shave and apply hair gel daily.

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Along with religious threads, crew members have also been asked to not wear religious rings with coloured stones and pearls. Other jewellery like nose-pins, neck jewellery and thumb rings are also not allowed. The airline has asked its crew to keep jewellery to a minimum to reduce flight delays.

The female crew also has been asked to wear full-make up, including eyeshadow, lipstick, and nail paint, in accordance with the airline shade card. The female crew has also been asked to match their nail paint with their lipstick. Those whose nails are short are asked to wear nude nail paint that matches their skin tone.

Under the new guidelines, when wearing sarees, the female crew is only allowed to show an inch of midriff with skin tone matching stockings. These stockings need to be worn even when wearing an Indo-western uniform as well.

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The airline has asked the crew to implement the whole host of changes immediately even as some crew feel like the guidelines are too strict. Others think that it is necessary to improve the image of the airline.

(Edited by : Priyanka Deshpande)

First Published:Nov 24, 2022 11:02 PM IST