Le collectif éphémère des personnels navigants sur les long-courriers

Abstract

On long-haul flights, the technical and sales staff appear to have known each other forever. Yet they have never seen each other before and will probably never meet again: their collective is always ephemeral, both in terms of its composition and the discontinuity inherent in the flight. To understand this “minor miracle”, a team of socioanthropologists undertook a participant observation of the flying staff and demonstrated the significant mobilization of “the sensible” through body language and the sharing of emotions. Time spent outside the aircraft shines further light on the staff’s shift aboard the flight, particularly the stopover, during which the members of the collective of flying personnel are immersed in shared memory and the observance of rituals, thereby enabling them to establish a “between-ourselves” mentality that protects them from the outside world. The ephemeral dimension of the collective increases both its intensity and interpretability.

Keywords

• Aeronautics
• Flying Personnel
• Sharing of the Sensible
• Collective Memory
• Body Language
• Sociogenesis