EVERY December, more than 1,000 female high school students, some as young as 15, take part in a “bikini competition” held in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. The event, hosted by Oriental Beauty, a modelling agency, provides a platform for aspiring flight attendants to show off their bikini bodies to eager recruiters from the Chinese airline industry. Those deemed the most attractive are invited to join a fast-track flight attendant trainee scheme, which can open the door to a dream job at one of China’s big airlines.

Many Chinese and other Asian airlines shamelessly exploit female sexuality. At China Southern Airlines, air hostesses must be 25 or younger and must not have “X or O shaped legs”. Stewardesses at Japan Airlines need to have “good skin complexion”. Indonesia’s flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, which Skytrax declared had the world's best cabin staff in 2016 (not a single Western airline made the shortlist), refuses to hire older, married women. VietJet Air, Vietnam’s low-cost carrier, requires that its female flight attendants be under 30 years old, be between 1.60-1.75m tall and apply “bold makeup”; the airline made a name for itself a few years back when its bikini-clad flight attendants were filmed performing sensual mid-flight dances to the delight of ogling male passengers.

Such cases date back to at least 1990, when a Michigan man was arrested for allegedly fondling a 9-year-old girl who was traveling with her 7-year-old sister aboard a Northwest Airlines flight.

“Airlines and flight attendants say it’s the first such incident they know of and doubt it could happen except under unusual circumstances,” the Seattle Times reported, noting that the alleged incident happened during an overnight flight when the lights were dimmed.

At the same time, however, the newspaper said the incident had “raised a new concern: youngsters being sexually molested en route.”

Goodfellow said airlines don’t necessarily need to revert to bans on men sitting next to unaccompanied minors.