Air France

The challenge

Every year, more than 13,000 Air France flight attendants must demonstrate a required level of competence to the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC) to remain cleared for duty. It is a condition of their regulated profession, comparable to other licensed fields where proof of proficiency is non-negotiable.

Passing an annual exam through last-minute preparation is achievable. Staying genuinely competent for the remaining eleven months is a different problem entirely. With traditional training methods based on reading and listening, people forget up to 80% of what they learn within a week. The conventional approach produced a temporary knowledge peak at the moment of the exam that declined quickly afterward. Yet cabin crew need to act decisively in any unexpected situation, not only on exam day. Memorizing manuals is not enough; airlines need committed professionals who can respond immediately when it matters.

For a workforce whose office is the aircraft, the logistics of learning compound the problem. Crew members only spend a handful of days per year at "the office." Many live far from the training center at Roissy, work across multiple time zones, and have limited windows between rotations. The face-to-face program that formed the bulk of training for years could not reliably reach this nomadic population.

A learning strategy built on seven principles

In March 2022, Air France won the Trophee du Digital Learning at the eLearning Expo in Paris, in the category Innovation in Learning. The award recognized a complete transformation of the cabin crew learning program. Anne Grjebine, Senior Advisor Innovation HR, and Alexandre Chiriac, Digital Learning Manager at the Air France Crew Academy (AFCA), developed the strategy around seven core principles: