Just days after Malaysia made deeply embarrassing international headlines when MP Datuk Shabudin Yahya suggested in parliament that rape victims could solve their “bleak futures” by marrying their rapists, local carrier Malindo Air is keeping the bad press ball rolling.
Malindo, apparently the regional airline world’s version of the creepy boss you can’t avoid at the office holiday party, held an open-call interview for flight attendants on March 11, according to the Malay Mail. You know the drill: experience, reactions to in-flight emergencies …can you stand the stench of a stale cabin and still smile?
After a few formalities, the women were allegedly led to a separate room for a “grooming check” where they were asked to strip to their bras, lift their skirts and remove their tights (buy a girl a drink first!).
Said attendee Krystal Melareena Goonting: “I thought it would be other standard grooming check involving teeth and nails. It wasn’t. We were lined up between two whiteboards and told to strip down for the upper body to be checked. Their reason? To check for skin disorientation such as scars and pimples.”
Krystal was told “where’s your head at? With a tattoo, of course not.”
Refusing to take her top off, she thanked them, then left.
The gauche interview protocols led several women to log a police report at Subang Jaya station. Flight attendants across the region, from MAS, to Singapore Air and Air Asia, expressed their shock and disgust.
However, Anne Azmn of Malindo Air’s cabin crew tweeted a photo of one of the complainants and wrote: “Too fat to be a stewardess, and then say people want to see your tits, stupid!”
She’s since deleted her tweet, and left this apology.
Stay classy, Malindo.
The airline has issued a press statement, saying that over the past 4 years, 700 women have passed through the interview without complaint, so I guess that absolves them of any indecency, right?
The airline’s PR and comms director, Raja Sa’adi Raja Amrin, meanwhile, had this to say: “We have the right to conduct such body checks on them. I think most airlines do the same, and their uniforms were “partially see-throughs”. (sic)
(Ed. They don’t, actually, and Air Asia managed to capitalize on the bad PR by reiterating that over there, no one will ask to see your tits, tats or tight-less legs).
I’m just going to leave Malindo’s twitter account here and let y’all do the rest.
Note: Sir, you work in comms. It’s “see-through”. I would even have accepted “see-thru” because that’s the txt spk generation we live in.
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