Dozens of flight attendants from several airlines have spoken out against low wages and dire living conditions as unions push for better pay. The Washington Post Revealed Monday.
Beth, who works for Delta Airlines, relies on flight attendant “living quarters,” which she shares with other employees on a rotational basis, paying between $325 and $450 a month depending on how often she stays.
With “cheap” furniture and dirty conditions, the apartment felt like “a cross between a cheap Airbnb and a hostel.” post's Natalie B. Compton said.
Beth lives in a temporary home with five other women and two men for part of the month and commutes to her main city base, while maintaining an $1,800 rent-restricted apartment in another state to be with her father, who has cancer.
“Nobody cleans up. We get bitten by what look like bedbugs,” she told the magazine. “They're cramming us in like sardines to make money.”
Other flight attendants are living in their cars, skipping meals and using the YMCA or gym to get to showers.
After undergoing about a month of unpaid training for her new job, Kay, a new hire at Frontier Airlines, is having to make ends meet by working as a Lyft driver, an Instacart delivery girl and a pet sitter.
Her expected earnings as a first-year flight attendant are $23,000, excluding taxes and insurance.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2023 Average wage The average annual salary for a flight attendant is $68,370, but first-year flight attendants make much less than that.
According to the Association of Flight Attendants, the nation's largest union for flight attendants, first-year salaries range from about $23,000 at Frontier Airlines to $25,000 at Alaska Airlines, $27,000 at American Airlines and $32,000 at Delta.
“Employment Proof” letter One recent graduate who became a flight attendant for American Airlines acknowledged that his first-year salary expectations, at $30.35 per flight hour, would be just over $27,000, since he would receive less or nothing at all during check-in.
Rich Henderson, who has been working as a flight attendant for over 10 years, post “It's common to work six hours a flight, but in reality you're working 12-14 hours.”
“There's a lot of time during our work where we don't get paid,” he added.
Compton noted that this payment structure is legal because aviation workers are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act because their jobs are deemed “essential to the economy.”
AFA President Sarah Nelson said: post Free boarding is “something we are fighting to end”.
May Report AFA uncovered shocking statistics about poverty among Alaskan flight attendants.
In the past year, 9 percent of Alaska flight attendants reported experiencing homelessness, living in their cars, living in a shelter, or a combination of these situations. More than 10 percent reported living with their parents or family because they couldn't afford rent. 43 percent said they had to live with multiple roommates. 29 percent of flight attendants said they live more than 100 miles away from the base airport because they couldn't afford to live close to base.
“As a passenger, you don't really see those things,” said Rebecca Owens, a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines. post“I see smiling, happy flight attendants doing everything they can to survive but still doing their job to the best of their ability. It's a tough thing to really comprehend.”
“This is a national problem,” Nelson said. “The basic standards and social contract that if you work full time you can have a living wage, health care, retirement benefits and actually have time to spend with your family are being eroded in aviation as much as in every other industry.”
Several flight attendants post Despite the enormous responsibility they bear to keep everyone on board safe, they are paid less than someone working a comparable number of hours at a fast-food restaurant.
“We need to supplement our income, but we can't even sleep,” Kay said. “We're expected to save people on planes, and we're not even being paid a livable wage.”
Frontier employees spoke only on the condition that they use nicknames they use outside of work, fearing retaliation from the company.
“It's probably the same situation at every airline right now,” said Julie Hedrick, a 42-year veteran in the airline industry and president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA).
“Working as a flight attendant is a great job if you last 12 years or more, but at the beginning, you're just barely surviving,” said Beth, who spoke on the condition that she use a name that she doesn't use at work.
Nath Lewis, a flight attendant with over 10 years of experience, runs a non-profit mental health organization called th|AIR|apy to support other flight attendants who have had suicidal thoughts due to poverty.
“Life is hard: rent, car payments, taking care of kids, food, work,” she said. post“I suffered to the point where I had suicidal thoughts and started drinking heavily just to forget it all and escape.”
After going to therapy and sharing her inner thoughts with other flight attendants, she realized many of her colleagues were suffering the same way.
Trecia Rayner, a long-time flight attendant, decided to have an honest discussion with her colleagues about their wages and living conditions after she discovered some of them were having to eat passengers' leftover in-flight meals to survive.
Rainer, who worked for Alaska Airlines for 16 years, created a Facebook group in September 2023 called “Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants Experiencing Hunger and Homelessness.”
“People were coming to work and hiding the fact that they didn't have anything to eat, or even a dollar to pay for the crew van during their layover,” she said. post“I wanted to take away the shame so people could talk openly and help each other.”
According to the outlet, she now runs “a mobile food pantry to provide meals to flight attendants in Anchorage.”
Members of her group have worked together to help other flight attendants escape domestic violence, cover the cost of necessities like child car seats and buy meals at the airport.
“The great thing about our work group is [flight attendants] “They're willing to give what they don't have to care for each other and it's very touching but also very sad,” said Owens, who helped Rainer start the Facebook group.
Martinez, who worked as a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines for 16 years, became a single mother of two after taking in her special needs niece and nephew from foster care.
Beth considered herself “blessed” to be a flight attendant with more than 12 years of experience, but Martinez had to leave her 9-year-old daughter with her parents and sleep in her car with her teenage son to make ends meet.
“I don't know what I'd do without my parents,” said Martinez, who spoke on the condition that only her last name be used.
She said that despite having the seniority to work more flights, “you can't work past 80 if you want to actually see the kids and be involved in their lives.” [flight hours].”
“But it's still too much,” she added, noting that although she earned $4,653.80 for 144 hours of flying time in December, she was away “the entire month” and “didn't see her kids in person.”
“As with all non-salaried employees, how much a flight attendant earns each year depends primarily on how much they work,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. post“It is important to note that cabin crew have a great deal of control over their own workload, as there is no contractually set minimum (or maximum) workload.”
A Delta spokesperson told the outlet that the airline's philosophy is to “take care of our employees through industry-leading pay and programs that provide emergency savings assistance, financial literacy and overall wellness.”
Airlines for America, a trade group that represents the major airlines, said in a statement that the airline workforce is “the backbone of our industry and our greatest asset.”
“U.S. passenger and cargo airlines employ more than 800,000 workers, the largest workforce in more than two decades, who enjoy the highest wages and most generous benefits in the history of aviation,” the industry group told The Washington Post, without specifically naming flight attendants.
