Story ID: 358FlightAttendants
Flight Attendant Gathering To Make NBAA-BACE Debut
By: Curt Epstein
Caption: A meet-up for the flight attendant community on the eve of the convention, its organizers hope to make it an annual event.
Word Count: 375
A year ago at NBAA-BACE in Orlando, Florida, flight attendants Young Park and Christina Depew realized there were no social events around the show catering specifically to flight attendants. Determined to do something about that, the pair began contacting colleagues for an impromptu happy hour gathering later that night, and in several hours they attracted nearly 30 participants to the get-together, many who were at the show for the first time to market themselves.

“We were able to talk about how difficult it is for them to navigate without knowing anybody,” said Park, who in her spare time also serves as CEO of Seoul, South Korea-based business aviation provisioner Les Chefs Catering. She noted flight attendants and flight technicians rarely get invited to the major company-sponsored after-hours gatherings where they could network.

That led the pair to organize a formal event for this year, which was held Monday evening at a banquet hall near Las Vegas McCarran International Airport. Organizers managed to secure a group of sponsors for the event, which they hope will become an annual occurrence.

The sponsors included NBAA; caterers AOC Inflight Catering (which donated the food for the event), Les Chefs Catering, On Air Dining, Stevie's Aviation Catering Los Angeles, and dnata; World Fuel; crew training providers Davinci Inflight Training, Aircare International, and Corporate Flight Attendant Training & Consulting by Susan C. Friedenberg; and staffing providers In-Flight Crew Connections and Jett Group.

The inaugural event attracted 100 people, including newly minted flight attendant Carolin Feigs, who just last month completed her training and learned about the event through industry social media groups as she prepared for her first NBAA show. She admitted to being overwhelmed pouring through the list of exhibitors "trying to figure out what booths even pertain to me—to pull together a schedule."

At the gathering, Feigs spoke with a variety of people, learning how they entered the industry and gained some pointers on what types of companies she should visit to make the most of the show. "This definitely helps with some of the networking so its not so overwhelming, you're not completely by yourself, just facing three days and hundreds of exhibitors," she said.
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