No woman, no flight!

Bob Marley could have written a tune about it. A distressed cabin crew boss is suing her employer because he allegedly forced her to employ only young, slim, single women to crew the private aircraft of his charter company. Alexandria Proud, from London, is claiming unfair constructive dismissal by charter aircraft firm Gama Aviation. That's the nub of all these disputes. Did the employer "construct" a policy of selective screening? Miss Proud says, "The successful candidate would be female, physically attractive, aged 18 to 30, single and no larger than a size 12." So if that was the criteria what were these young women employed to do exactly?

She says she was verbally abused by the company owner, Alireza Ittehedeh, who she claims did not support her. Mr.Ittehedeh would not permit her to employ male flight attendants who he believed to be gay, so she says.

What I gather is that Gama Aviation, as gleaned from its website, is aimed at American, British, French, Arab, and Russian corporate types. The majority of these customers could be described as male, macho and meaning business. It's not surprising that Mr.Ittehedeh may have thought they would expect female, physically attractive, 18 to 30, single and no larger than a size 12, women to be offering drinks and dainty morsels at every request.

My answer to this case is that Miss Proud found the pool from which to recruit exceedingly small and Mr.Ittehedeh's perceived or otherwise views on gays became a paramount issue. He may well have favoured women only as a business reason and he may well not favour gays, but his stance is little different from the 1950's version of flying.

There is something to be said for the anti-discrimination laws but sometimes it gets out of hand. Not all male flight attendants are gay, by a long stretch. Not all flying executives expect to be waited upon as if Peter Stringfellow was in charge of events. Common sense leaves the plane and both sides settle down to stoking up the accusation level. So we end up with pay-offs and not a lot else.

I'm not sure many gay men would be queuing up for such a job, but neither should they be refused just because of a perception. If only all employers ran companies with an eye on the "triangle". A business relies on three parts - the customers, the employees and the shareholders being in a win-win situation and meeting at the centre. Start to pull the centre towards one part and trouble begins.