Skip to content
man bot

Service and sales workers · code 5111

Travel attendants and travel stewards

Travel attendants and travel stewards ensure the comfort and safety of passengers, serve meals and beverages and render personal services, usually on aircraft and on board ships. They may plan and coordinate housekeeping and social activities on ships. Tasks include - (a) greeting passengers entering aircraft or ships, checking tickets or boarding passes, and directing passengers to their seats or berths; (b) announcing, explaining and demonstrating safety and emergency procedures such as the use of oxygen masks, seat belts and life jackets; (c) assembling and serving pre-prepared meals and beverages; (d) selling duty-free and other goods; (e) taking care of general needs and comfort of passengers, answering inquiries, and keeping cabins clean and tidy; (f) directing and assisting passengers and following prescribed procedures in the event of an emergency, such as evacuating an aircraft following an emergency landing; (g) verifying that first aid kits and other emergency equipment are in working order; (h) administering first aid to passengers in distress; (i) attending pre-flight briefings concerning weather, altitudes, routes, emergency procedures, crew coordination, lengths of flights, food and beverage services offered, and numbers of passengers; (j) preparing passengers and aircraft for take-off and landing; (k) determining special assistance needs of passengers such as small children, the elderly or disabled persons. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Cabin attendant - Flight attendant - Ship’s steward

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 162 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • cabin crew manager
  • steward/stewardess

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

78.5
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 21.5 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 21.5 = 78.5

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

54.5
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 4 US jobs

36
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 33.3 · hand skill 33.7 · cramped spaces 41 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7 Hands-on, helping and caring for others

Physical work where helping and caring for people is a big part of the job. For care work, whether a machine could do the movements is only half the question. The other half is whether anyone wants one to. The US data counts helping workmates too, so a few trades end up here.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 54.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 40.5, while the average is 21.5. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 40.5

    Attending pre-flight briefings concerning weather, altitudes, routes, emergency procedures, crew coordination, lengths of flights, food and beverage services offered, and numbers of passengers

    Low
  2. 38.8

    Selling duty-free and other goods

    Low
  3. 26.5

    Greeting passengers entering aircraft or ships, checking tickets or boarding passes, and directing them to their seats or berths

    Low
  4. 22.5

    Announcing, explaining and demonstrating safety and emergency procedures, such as the use of oxygen masks, seat belts, and life jackets

    Very Low
  5. 21.8

    Directing and assisting passengers and following prescribed procedures in the event of an emergency, such as evacuating an aircraft following an emergency landing

    Very Low
  6. 20

    Preparing passengers and aircraft for take-off and landing

    Very Low
  7. 17.8

    Determining special assistance needs of passengers such as small children, the elderly, or disabled persons.

    Very Low
  8. 16.5

    Assembling and serving pre-prepared meals and beverages

    Very Low
  9. 15

    Taking care of general needs and comfort of passengers, answering inquiries, and keeping cabins clean and tidy

    Very Low
  10. 9

    Verifying that first aid kits and other emergency equipment are in working order

    Very Low
  11. 8.5

    Administering first aid to passengers in distress

    Very Low

11 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
53
AI does it for you
26

Helping wins by 27 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 4517

Compared with similar jobs

There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” group, averaging 74.3. This one is above that.