A 50-year-old Chinese woman and former underwear model has shown that age is not an obstacle after being given the boot from her job as a flight attendant – and being flooded with job offers from three other airlines after she sent her CV.

The airline where the woman had worked for had been forced to get rid of some staff following the COVID pandemic and had selected her, but the 50-year-old, who works out regularly to keep her shape was determined to prove she was still worth being employed.

In China, most airlines have an age limit of under 30, with some even demanding that new recruits be aged under 25.

But despite this ageist policy, she felt she still had a lot to offer, so she brushed up her CV and sent it to 3 airlines, and was delighted when all three offered her a job.

The woman, Pingshan Hu, who has been living in Finland since the early 90s, said she had worked hard to keep the figure of a 20-year-old that it also allowed her to do modelling assignments. She even came third in the Fit Model competition in Finland at the age of 48.

She had moved to Finland after going there to study in 1996 and met her then-boyfriend and now-husband Risto.

Pingshan said it was depressing to have been dismissed from her previous company, not named, after six years of service but had been determined to prove she had a lot to offer, and was amazed when three airline companies responded saying that they wanted to hire her.

She said: “Fortunately foreign airlines have no age limit.”

And Pingshan said that her paying attention to physical training and maintaining a healthy diet was a great advantage as well.

Soon, the Swedish base of Eurowings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, where she applied, called back wanting to hire her.

And in early 2022, she signed up for an interview with the Nordic regional airline (Norra), which is partnering with Finnair.

Unlike the interviews at Eurowings, Norra’s interviews were all in Finnish, and this time, she also passed the test smoothly.

Ultimately, she chose to go to Eurowings.

At the end of June 2022, Ms Hu applied for a flight attendant at Finnair in Sweden and successfully passed the two-week course to join the new company.

As of late November this year, she has been flying with the new airline for three months, and her destination has been changed from the United States to Doha, Qatar.

Pingshan said moving short-haul flights to long-haul showed that age should be no barrier as she is trusted for the hard work needed in caring for passengers over an extended period of time.