The rule of thumb for cabin attendance is 1 per 50 PAX however the seating arrangement and emergency exits placement requires complete ground PAX exit in 90 seconds for certification, so 1 per 50 could conceivably be 2 ( leave your damn carry-on bags and get your a** off ). There is basically 7 weeks training and there are written and physical gates that are required to met at the end of each instructional block and yes they do have wash-outs and self eliminations during the “school house“ training. Once a year they return to the school house for refresher training and annual certification. Crew rest requirements are not as tight as the cockpit crew they are required 9 hours undisturbed rest for every 14 hours duty, and the standard “10 hours between bottle and throttle” as the old expression goes. The f***ed thing is their duty day clock starts at push back and ends at touch down so you can see the regional crew has to be a math wizard when they have multiple stops during their duty day. Boarding and Deplaning, WX, broke down aircraft, and any other delays is all non duty time ( free labor for the airlines ) that is their cross their cross they carry. There is a laundry list of medication’s that are not allowed to be taken and fly along with various illnesses. Personal experience is there no way to compare Amtraks crew to aircraft crews because Amtrak could at most cross 2 times zones in 24 hours and a flight from say Tokyo to the West Coast crosses 14 time zone and goes back in time crossing the Date Line all in 11 hours, and that body effect is a cumulative over the years. One key point I forgot HOURLY PAY is from push back to touch down. modern long range aircrafts have unseen crew rest area, you can Google it if interested. Learning all the rules and exceptions is a never end process as some seam to “change with wind direction” as another old expression goes. They unfortunately burn out before the front end guys do.
