Introduction The roles of flight attendants are to provide excellent customer service to passengers while ensuring their comfort and safety throughout the flight. Flight attendants have more responsibilities than most front-line employees in the service industry, as they are first trained to maintain cabin safety, and second to provide customer services on board. The aim of our study was to determine influence of different psychosocial risk factors on flight attendants work ability.

Methods Field study among cabin crew in Croatia was performed during May 2016. Questionnaires regarding job burnout, workplace stress levels, work ability index (WAI) and socio-demographic questions have been administered to 121 cabin crew in coordination and permission of their trade union. Response rate were 76.8% giving a total number of 93 participants. Data were analysed using Statistica 12 (http://statistica.io/).

Result Majority (84.9%) of participants were women with average age of 40.1±5.5 years. More than 2/3 of cabin crew had unsatisfactory WAI score (62/93) and 23 (24.7%) had low WAI indicating very high priority of adequate preventive measure in work ability preservation. High burnout level had near 50% of all participants (42/93). Highest negative correlation with WAI score (r=−0.625; p<0.001) that was confirmed with binary logistic regression model controlled for other socio-demographic variables (OR for burnout score: 1.35; 95% CI: 1.05 to 1.74) showed that higher burnout score is main determinant of low work ability.

Conclusion The occupation of flight attendant is often used as an example of emotional work and due to their work organisation, specific shifts, constant time pressure and responsibility they are highly prone to job burnout. It is imperative to make immediate preventive intervention to reduce levels of burnout among cabin crew and maintain their work ability