Posted by Phillip Jewell on
Along with your CV, an effective cover letter is one of the most important aspects of the job application process when pursuing cabin crew jobs.
Approaching job applications in the aviation industry with a good cover letter is a sure-fire way of ensuring your cabin crew applications don't run aground.
Cabin crew jobs are in high demand. Offering freedom, international travel and many fantastic experiences, the role of flight attendant is among the most sought-after jobs.
Just like when writing your CV, it’s extremely important to make yourself stand out from the crowd. View our guide to writing a cabin crew CV, which includes two cabin crew CV templates.
Your cover letter must show recruiters why you’re a stronger candidate than the competition.
In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to write a brilliant cabin crew cover letter that generates job interviews.
- How to write the perfect cabin crew cover letter for flight attendants and those with no experience as cabin crew
- Three great cabin crew cover letter examples
- How to structure and format your cabin crew cover letter
- What to include on your cabin crew cover letter
- A cabin crew cover letter example for those with no experience as a flight attendant
There are no hard rules regarding the way cover letters should be written. However, following a simple structure can help to guide you through the process.
We find this six-step process works best:
1. Introduction
2. Overview of knowledge and expertise
3. Key selling points
4. Why you want to work for the airline
5. Key skills
6. Polite ending and call to action
As you can see, when broken down into a six-step process, writing a cover letter doesn’t seem so daunting. However, there is plenty of work to be done to ensure you prepare a cover letter that makes an impact on recruiters.
Let’s look at these five steps in more detail.
Start your cover letter with a brief, professional introduction. Explain your interest in the role and tell the reader why you are writing the letter.
Provide a brief summary of yourself, touching on your areas of expertise, experiences and knowledge. Keep this part short and to-the-point.
This part of your cover letter is where you highlight your strongest selling points. Draw on your greatest strengths to convince the reader that you’re the perfect candidate for the job.
Have you got multiple years’ business class flight attendant experience? If so, focus on that here. Have you been recognised for improving the passenger experience? If so, focus on that here.
Showcase your key successes and achievements. If possible, quantify your achievements with numbers to bolster them and make a more powerful impact on the reader.
This is the part where your research comes into play.
Explain how you fit into the airline’s values and culture. By marrying yourself to the airline’s values and showing that you understand the airline, you’ll show that you're genuinely interested in working for the airline.
Describe a few of your strongest skills. Provide examples of times you have used the skills to achieve positive outcomes.
End your cover letter by thanking the reader for their time. State that you look forward to hearing from them and that you would be eager to discuss your application further.
What are the most important skills to include on a cabin crew cover letter? Here, we detail five of the most valued skills for flight attendants, as well as how to show them on your cover letter.
However, remember your cover letter should be tailored to you and your experiences. You should identify your most valuable skills and showcase them in a way that sells you to recruiters.
If your skill set includes these skills, ensure to follow our advice to demonstrate them on your cabin crew cover letter.
Cabin crew jobs are primarily about optimising the passenger experience while maintaining their safety. Excellent customer service is vital in achieving this.
On your cover letter, articulate your customer experience skills. Show that you go the extra mile to deliver outstanding customer service and ensure to convey your customer-driven approach to tasks.
As with most jobs, communication is a vital skill for flight attendants. Whether it be engaging with passengers or colleagues, strong communication is key to ensuring the smooth-running of flights.
A great way of showing off your communication skills on your cover letter is to describe achievements and successes that came about as a result of your communication skills.
As a member of cabin crews, you’ll always be on the move, landing in different countries and working with new colleagues regularly. As such, flight attendants need to be adaptable.
To demonstrate your adaptability on your cover letter, show that you’re dynamic and capable of acclimatising to change. Write about times you were receptive to change and modified your behaviour to accommodate change.
Other ways of showing your adaptability include writing about times you learned new skills to perform new tasks and developed new solutions to problems.
Flight attendants are usually seen as the face of airlines. For this reason, cabin crew members must be able to maintain a high level of professionalism at all times.
To covey your professionalism on your cover letter, draw attention to times you demonstrated professionalism while operating in challenging environments.
In order to meet objectives and ensure flights run efficiently, a good degree of effective teamwork is essential among cabin crew members.
Highlight times that you have demonstrated your teamworking qualities. This may involve activities outside of employment. For example, do you take part in sporting events? Did you work in groups at university?
These kind of activities enable you to provide fantastic examples that demonstrate your teamworking skills.
When writing your cabin crew cover letter, it's important to conduct some research into the airline you are applying to work for. This is because you need to understand the airline’s values and organisational culture.
When you understand this information, you can then explain how you are aligned with the airline’s values and culture.
As an example, let’s take a look at the values and culture of Emirates.
This was summed up by the airline’s president, Tim Clark, in an interview with Airlines IATA: ‘The success of Emirates is the result of our corporate culture of innovation and a pioneering spirit, combined with a ‘make it happen’ attitude that is shared throughout the organization at all levels. Working with bright, talented people who are not afraid to take calculated risks makes my job easy.’
So, what are the key takeaways from this in terms of Emirates’ values and culture?
Well, we now know that the airline values innovation, a pioneering spirit, determination, talent and calculated risk-taking.
So, if you were preparing a cover letter for Emirates, you should convey how you meet these values. This is, of course, assuming you do in fact meet these values. We would never encourage anyone to lie on their cover letter for any reason whatsoever.
Honesty is always the best policy when approaching job applications.
Another great aspect of research is that is shows recruiters you’re genuinely interested in their airline. At least interested enough to learn about the company.
Take your research a step further and find out what the airline’s objectives are for the future. Learn about their market position. If you can mention any of this in your cover letter, without coming across as pretentious, you’ll convince the recruiter that you have a sincere interest in joining the airline.
If you have no cabin crew experience, you may be wondering how to complete the impossible task of writing a strong cover letter for flight attendant positions.
The truth is, it’s not that difficult.
Customer service experience is the one of the most important experiences for cabin crew jobs. And customer service experience isn’t exclusive to flight attendants.
While customer service experience obtained in the air may be valued more than customer service experience obtained on ground, both use the same principles to provide customers with an excellent service.
So, if possible, make your customer service skills the focus of your cover letter, whether you acquired the experience in air or on the ground.
If you don’t have any customer service experience, identify your transferable skills. You might not have experience supporting customers, but you will most likely have experience supporting people. Draw attention to your people skills, communication skills and how you’re adept at helping people.
It's also important to be prepared to demonstrate your relevant experience in your cabin crew job interview. Check out our 20 most common cabin crew job interview questions and how to answer them.
Here is an example cover letter for a flight attendant who has no prior cabin crew experience.
State that you’re prepared to train
With no cabin crew experience, training is a big factor in the future of your flight attendant career. For this reason, it’s important to focus to any flight attendant training you have undertaken.
If you haven’t yet completed any flight attendant training, get cracking on some training courses. Research courses that cover the basics of cabin crew roles and identify the perfect course for you.
It’s also beneficial to complete cabin crew job interview training, as well as training for the general recruitment process, such as training for open days.
This is a very important aspect of cover letter writing.
To ensure your cover letter is professional and easy-to-read, you must add line spacing between paragraphs.
Cover letters that don’t use line spacing often appear as one huge block of text. Most recruiters won’t even read these letters as they make for such a poor reading experience, so make sure to utilise Microsoft Word’s line spacing feature.
To add spacing to your cover letter, highlight the text, click ‘Layout’, then add 8 pt. spacing in the ‘After’ section.
This will ensure your paragraphs are easily distinguished from each other. It will also optimise your recruiter’s reading experience, which can only be a positive thing!
Ideally, you should be aiming for margin sizes of between 1.7 cm (0.66”) and 2.2 cm (0.86”). Of course, you can widen or narrow the margins further in line with the amount of content you do or don’t have to include. But try not to make them too wide or too narrow in order to ensure your letter is professional in appearance.
Use common fonts that readers have become accustomed to. These include Times New Roman, Garamond and Calibri.
Don’t be creative with your fonts. At best your cover letter will look unprofessional. At worst it will be too difficult to read.
Font sizes should be between 11 pt. and 12 pt. for most fonts, including Times New Roman, Calibri and Garamond. Make sure your text is neither too small or too large.
A week or two after applying for the job, it’s advisable to send a job application follow up letter. Follow up letters thank the hiring manager for their time, reinforce what makes you a unique candidate and reiterate your interest in the role.
Keep your follow up letter short and concise. Don’t go into too much detail and try to avoid a pestering tone in your cover letter.
You may think of follow up letter as a bit pushy. However, they are a professional way of recapping on your suitability for the role and demonstrating you’re enthusiasm.
Your cover letter should be accompanied with a powerful CV. Without a strong cabin crew CV, even a great cover letter will struggle to get you results in the job market.
To learn how to write an effective flight attendant CV, take a look at our step-by-step cabin crew CV writing guide, which includes flight attendant CV examples.
Or view 15 of our CV examples and templates, which you can use today to maximise your job search.
When saving your cover letter in Microsoft Word – or whichever word processor you are using – make sure to give it a simple, professional title. Something like ‘Cover Letter’ is appropriate.
Avoid unprofessional titles such as ‘coverletter023432’. When recruiters see such titles on documents, they may instantly form an opinion of you as an unprofessional candidate.
If you’re submitting your CV along with your cover letter, state that you’ve enclosed the CV. To do this, include the abbreviation ‘Enc.: CV’ at the bottom of your cover letter, as demonstrated in the cover letter samples in this guide.
We hope this guide and our cabin crew cover letter templates have proved useful in helping you prepare an engaging, interview-generating cover letter.
More of our free cabin crew/flight attendant career resources:
- 2 cabin crew CV examples and templates
- Cabin crew LinkedIn summary example
- 20 cabin crew job interview questions and how to answer them
