The Key to Sustainable Growth of Airlines: The Safety Orientation of Cabin Crew

Purpose: The cabin crew's in-flight work consists of safety and security-related tasks and requires specialized knowledge. With the popularization of air travel, the importance of safety-related work for cabin crew is becom-ing more and more important. Therefore, it is time to consider the work of cabin crew from a safety-oriented point of view and study to clarify the duties of cabin crew. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of cabin crew knowledge pursuance on work self-efficacy and safety orientation, and the effect of cabin crew job regulation on work self-efficacy and safety orientation. The mediating effect of work self-efficacy is also verified. Method: The questionnaire, targeting Korean staff working as flight attendant in domestic and overseas airline companies, has been carried out for this study, and on-line questionnaire has been processed as to maximize their participation. In this study, the hypothesis was verified through a structural equation model using 22 observa-tional variables and 4 latent variables whose reliability and validity were confirmed through the evaluation of the measurement. Results: First, both knowledge pursuance and job regulation have a significant effect on the work self-efficacy of airline cabin crew. Second, knowledge pursuance had a significant effect on safety orientation, but job regula-tion had no significant effect on safety orientation. Third, work self-efficacy has a significant effect on safety orientation. Fourth, work self-efficacy is partially mediated in the relationship between knowledge pursuance and safety-orientation of airline cabin crew. Fifth, work self-efficacy is completely mediated in the relationship between job regulation and safety orientation of airline cabin crew, and the mediating effect is statistically sig-nificant. Conclusion: Cabin crew's efforts to continuously acquire and maintain professional knowledge on the overall safety of aircraft and safety for each aircraft type are important factors that enable the professionalism of the cabin crew. Safety knowledge and safety motivation play an important role as antecedent variables for carrying out safety behaviors consisting of safety compliance and safety participation. Proposals for various programs that allow indirect experience of safety-related situations include in-house safety seminars, easy-to-use VR-based safety accident and incident case, and constructive individual feedback. This training method will provide an op-portunity for cabin crew to gain confidence in their ability to respond well to a variety of safety-related accidents and accidents based on their aviation-related safety knowledge.