Ladyboy crew A-OK
A new Thai airline has actively sought transgender staff in recruiting flight attendants.
Three out of 20 of the airline’s first batch of successful air crew recruits are transgender, with one a former winner of a national Thai transgender beauty pageant.
Thanyarat Jiraphatpakorn was the 2007 winner of the Miss Tiffany pageant, which is screened on national TV in Thailand each year.
Jiraphatpakorn told The Nation newspaper she didn’t initially take the job offer seriously.
“At first I thought they would just take applications but not actually recruit us, as happened at other places before,” she said.
Another successful applicant told of being turned down by other airlines in the past despite having a hospitality and tourism degree from a major university.
The transgender staff will undergo training alongside flight attendants who were born female, but will have a third sex marked on their name tags to avoid potential immigration issues.
