The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Occupation · SOC 53-6061.00 · Job Zone 2

AI exposure: Passenger Attendants

Provide services to ensure the safety of passengers aboard ships, buses, trains, or within the station or terminal. Perform duties such as explaining the use of safety equipment, serving meals or beverages, or answering questions related to travel.

Reading this score

computed

At 30.0% of weighted task load, Passenger Attendants sits at the 53th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 60.2% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.

What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 12 tasks it averages 2.04 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.

The most exposed thing this job does is Respond to passengers' questions, requests, or complaints, at 80.0%. The least is Adjust window shades or seat cushions at the request of passengers, at 0.0%. A gap of 80.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.

Within transportation and material moving occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 52 roles in the group is 24.2%, and only 15 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.

What would move this score. Of 12 tasks, 5 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 7 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.

Where the score comes from

judged

Every task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.

DimensionMeanScale
Capability1.580-4
Embodiment2.040-3
Presence1.920-3
Accountability0.830-3
Context1.210-3
Verification cost1.080-3

Task by task

12 tasks, O*NET 31.0
TaskExposedAssistedUntouchedImportanceBand
Respond to passengers' questions, requests, or complaints.80.0%20.0%0.0%4.66exposed
Greet passengers boarding transportation equipment and announce routes and stops.80.0%20.0%0.0%4.41exposed
Provide customers with information on routes, gates, prices, timetables, terminals, or concourses.80.0%20.0%0.0%4.74exposed
Count and verify tickets and seat reservations and record numbers of passengers boarding and disembarking.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.45exposed
Explain and demonstrate safety procedures and safety equipment use.45.0%30.0%25.0%4.74exposed
Perform equipment safety checks prior to departure.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.75untouched
Signal transportation operators to stop or to proceed.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.70untouched
Secure passengers for transportation by buckling seatbelts or fastening wheelchairs with tie-down straps.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.68untouched
Determine or facilitate seating arrangements.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.51untouched
Open and close doors for passengers.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.44untouched
Provide boarding assistance to elderly, sick, or injured people.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.12untouched
Adjust window shades or seat cushions at the request of passengers.0.0%0.0%100.0%2.92untouched

Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean. 1 task(s) lacked a usable O*NET weight and are shown but excluded from the weighting.

Occupations either side of this one

The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.

Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.

What this means in practice

Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.