KUALA LUMPUR, March 15 ― Flight attendant onboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370,  Mohamad Hazrin Mohamed Hasnan had been popular with the ladies before marrying another crew member, his colleagues said.

According to The Wall Street Journal, they describe him as a good-looking man and one of the friendliest of the airlines’ attendants. The 34-year-old father was one of 12 crew onboard Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8 enroute to Beijing.

The WSJ also said Hazrin and his wife had a three-year old daughter and were expecting their second child in May. His close colleague called him a devoted dad – earlier this year, after the two worked a shift to London, Hazrin had gone to a hypermarket to stock up on supplies to bring home to his toddler.

Flight attendants said the crew aboard Flight 370 was a seasoned group, since more expertise is required to staff flights on 777s (or, as many flight attendants call them, “triple sevens”). As a long-range jumbo jet, the Boeing plane has the capacity to carry several hundred people, thus posing more logistical challenges. It also requires a different set of operating and safety procedures than smaller planes used in short-haul flights, said the WSJ.

 According to flight attendants, the six-hour overnight flight to Beijing is  not a particularly popular one, as it comes with a packed schedule with only a 24-hour rest period after landing before staff takes to the air again.

The newspaper also mentioned that flight crew are only permitted to sleep in shifts on flights of 12 hours or longer, Hazrin’s colleagues said, which meant those working the Beijing red-eye would have to go without rest. A flight attendant also remarked on the tendency for Chinese passengers ― who dominate the route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing ― to be restless, occasionally impatient and not always tolerant of the rules.

The WSJ cited the attendants as saying the crew on board Flight 370 would have been assigned to the route and likely would not have volunteered, as the sole perk was perhaps, getting to shop in Beijing, a popular destination for cheap knock-off goods among some Malaysians.

Most flight attendants working on the plane were male, something other Malaysia Airlines attendants said was not surprising. One flight attendant estimated that men made up perhaps as much as half of the airlines’ flight crew staff because the turnover for women is higher. Many tend to leave after just a few years, the attendant said, some to marry wealthy passengers.

The WSJ quoted Hazrin’s uncle, Mustapha Kamaruddin, saying that his nephew enjoyed his job. The news that he was on Flight 370 came as a shock, he added. Hazrin typically flew on European and Australian routes.

“He wouldn’t usually be on that plane,” his uncle said.