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Flight Attendants Selection by an Integrated MCDM Model
Tung-Lin Chuang and Kuei-Lun Chang
The airline industry is facing increasingly fierce competition. Studies have shown that flight attendants are key factors in enhancing service quality, corporate competitiveness, and customer satisfaction. The selection of optimal flight attendants plays an important role in airlines. However, personnel selection is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) issue that directly affects a corporation’s competitiveness and sustainable growth. As to the literature on flight attendant selection, one study confirmed the selection criteria based on the opinions of airline managers. In our research, we identified the selection criteria based on the opinions of tour managers. Moreover, the other one selected flight attendants in accordance with only six criteria. To fill the gap in previous studies, this study developed an integrated MCDM model that can assist airline executives in selecting flight attendants. Based on the opinions of 309 tour managers, we first determined 15 selection criteria for flight attendants using importance-performance analysis (IPA). They are responsibility, communication, responsiveness, loyalty, proactiveness, instant customer response, professional customer response, kindness, patience, empathy, teamwork, emotion management, problem-solving ability, stress resistance, and adaptability. Based on the previous literature, we classified the selection criteria and built a hierarchical structure. Then, we applied the hierarchical structure to an airline and assisted its managers in selecting flight attendants using analytic hierarchy process (AHP), combined with technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). Integrating AHP with TOPSIS can improve decision-making efficiency. Finally, the applicability of the model was shown by a case study and the case company made the decision according to the results of this study. A comparison analysis was carried out to show the robustness of the results.
Keywords: Flight attendant, importance-performance analysis (IPA), analytic hierarchy process (AHP), technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS)