By NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press
LOBNYA, Russia (AP) — "Old, fat and ugly" is what Yevgeniya Magurina jokingly calls a group of flight attendants for Russia's flagship airline Aeroflot who she claims have been sidelined in an apparent drive to make the cabin crew younger and more physically attractive.
A Moscow court is due to rule on Tuesday in Magurina's lawsuit against Aeroflot, the first of two possible appeals against a previous ruling rejecting her claim that she was taken off sought-after long-haul international flights because of her looks. The stewardess' action has triggered a wave of support as well condemnation, putting the spotlight on how women in modern Russia are still often judged by their physical appearance.
The first warning for Magurina, 42, came last summer when she went to pick up a new uniform and discovered that Aeroflot no longer stocks any above Russian size 48 (U.S. size 10.) Magurina, who says size 48 fits her hips but not her chest, used to order a larger size and get it tailored.
Then, all flight attendants were ordered to be weighed and photographed as part of a contest to staff a special business class crew. Several months later, Magurina, who had typically worked as senior attendant, arrived at the Sheremetyevo airport for her flight only to see she was assigned a junior role: "You scan your pass, the names of the crew light up and you see your position. No one has even told me."
Magurina says a sympathetic manager leaked her documents showing that some 600 of Aeroflot's 7,000 cabin crew staff, mostly women, were re-assigned to lesser flights without bonus pay because they were considered too "old, fat and ugly." The Associated Press could not verify the numbers.
"No one cares about professionalism — you have to be young, slim and pretty," she said. But local courts in April dismissed her lawsuit as well as a similar claim by another flight attendant, Irina Ierusalimskaya, saying it lacked evidence of discrimination.
Vladimir Alexandrov, Aeroflot's deputy CEO for legal matters, says Magurina and Ierusalimskaya's lawsuits are "a routine employee vs. employer dispute that has been deliberately inflated to the scale of a public campaign aimed at tarnishing the airline's reputation."
Magurina is seeking 500,000 rubles ($8,500) in damages and wants the court to rule the company's regulations on clothing sizes discriminatory. The pay slips she submitted show that she stopped receiving bonus pay, roughly 20 percent, after she asked for a size 52 uniform, and that she was no longer assigned the role of senior steward. Magurina and Ierusalimskaya claim that the downgrading was part of a wider move against hundreds of others who faced pay cuts and were taken off the prestigious long-haul flights. The two lawsuits are individual actions, and the two women say they are the only ones taking Aeroflot to court.