Along with dealing with airport security and disruptive passengers, flight attendants must also battle low wages. Natalie B. Compton, travel reporter for the Washington Post, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why even though being deemed essential workers, flight attendants struggle with living paycheck-to-paycheck. Plus, we’ll hear about the surprising rules that determine how much flight attendants are paid for each flight that don’t take into account how much work they actually do. Her article is “‘Barely surviving’: Some flight attendants are facing homelessness and hunger.”
The fight for flights and fair wages
By Madelyn Walton, Think Intern
Airport travel can be a grueling experience. Waiting in long lines to get through security, navigating airport traffic to the gate, and the boarding process are well-known complaints. At the end of the day, the whole experience is worth it for passengers when they arrive at their destination, but while travelers are headed home or on vacation, many flight attendants leave the gate to clock into their second job.
Natalie B. Compton is a travel reporter for The Washington Post. She joined Krys Boyd to discuss flight attendant wages, the privilege of seniority status at an airline, and why time spent on the ground can be a struggle. Her article is “‘Barely Surviving’: Some Flight Attendants are Facing Homelessness and Hunger.”
“For decades, Hollywood and media have glamorized flight attendants for a fast-paced, globe-trotting lifestyle,” says Compton. “In reality, their story mirrors the income inequality in other global industries that rely on blue-collar workers.”
Like many front-line workers, flight attendants are a necessity. Their priority is to keep passengers safe in the event of an emergency, however, their pay does not reflect the work they do.
When a flight gets delayed, flight attendants become just as frustrated as the passenger because many don’t even get paid for boarding process.
“This is because they do not fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act, because they are considered essential workers,” Compton says. “They’re not considered the same kind of employee.”
Delta Airlines is the exception to this mandate. They pay their crew half of their hourly wage for boarding.
According to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Delta airlines is the highest paying airline for flight attendants with a starting annual pay of $31,950. One senior attendant from Delta also noted that their pay gets better the longer they are with the airline.
For rookie flight attendants, the financial burden begins when they are assigned their placement. Many of them have no control over the hours they work and can be placed where the cost of living is high.
“They’re expecting to make a certain wage in a cheaper city, but they get put in a home base of New York City,” says Compton.“Suddenly the rent is much more than they anticipated, and they need to work a lot more to make that work.”
These flight attendants go through hours of training, usually unpaid, and are left to fend for themselves.
“Most new flight attendants work ‘on reserve,’ spending days waiting to be assigned flights,” she says. “It’s common for them to take side jobs – bartenders, semi-truck drivers, makeup artist, church musicians.”
Compton talked to a few flight attendants who said their time spent on the ground consists of Door Dash deliveries and looking for their next place to stay. And for some, insufficient wages have forced many of these flight attendants into homelessness.
In the past, flight attendants have organized strikes to become unionized and fight for better pay and benefits, but the process is easier said than done.
“We need flight attendants and so it is a trickier road to actually striking,” Compton says. “So, you might see flight attendants picketing outside of an airport. You might see people having rallies places, but as far as a walk off, no work strike, it is much harder for flight attendants to do.”
Many people may wonder why these flight attendants don’t just look for another career. Compton notes that their reasoning is in part with the sunk-cost fallacy. This is the phenomenon that people stick to something that does not directly benefit them because they are invested in it.
“One takeaway from talking to these people who do the job of a flight attendant…people love the job, they love it even if it is financially super challenging,” she says. “They love being with people. They think it is something that they’re good at. They enjoy working with other flight attendants.”
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] Flight attendants have to make it through months of safety and first aid training in order to be hired by any major airline. Meet fairly strict grooming and uniform standards and show up well before a flight takes off to help get passengers situated for a workday that may run to 12 hours from start to finish. For all that, those at the start of their careers might earn about the same as the folks who work in the fast food places at the airport. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. I’ll go on record to say I think fast food workers deserve a decent living wage for full time work. I mean them no disrespect. But I was really surprised when I read a recent article about the hardships faced by flight attendants for the first several years of their careers. If they can hold out that long, the job of flight attendants might seem glamorous given the travel benefits. But as my guest learned, some people in these careers struggle to afford a roof over their heads or even decent meals when they are home. Natalie B. Compton is a travel reporter for The Washington Post, which published her article, “Barely Surviving: Some flight attendans are facing homelessness and hunger. Natalie, welcome to Think.
Natalie B. Compton [00:01:10] Thank you so much for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:01:12] It’s possible, of course, to fall into an occupation because a certain job is open at the time. We need a job and the rest is history. Like retail sales or food service. But being a flight attendant seems like a pretty deliberate choice for most people, right, given the training involved.
Natalie B. Compton [00:01:28] Absolutely. People go into this profession for many reasons. Most see it as a long term life career, a dream job for many people that comes with. Like you said, those travel benefits, they expect to have this glamorous lifestyle. And because it is a very difficult career to get into, it takes applying to even be considered. Then you need to make it through a very strict training so nobody really ends up here by accident. It is a very deliberate, years long process for many people to even start.
Krys Boyd [00:02:00] What did people tell you about why they wanted to do this for a living?
Natalie B. Compton [00:02:04] So I interviewed 18 current and former flight attendants for this story. And a common thread between everyone was not only having that love of travel, but also having this affinity for being with people, for serving people, for interacting with travelers. They all had this spirit of hospitality and camaraderie and enjoyed being around people in a in a social setting. So it was that combination of having the opportunity to have a great job being around people and loving to travel that brought those people to this lifestyle.
Krys Boyd [00:02:42] Broadly speaking, what does it take to be hired as a flight attendant? Like what education or qualifications or previous experience are airlines looking for?
Natalie B. Compton [00:02:51] It’s really interesting talking to flight attendants because you will meet ones with every kind of background. There are former law enforcement officers, there are teachers, there are people from all backgrounds, you name it. And you don’t need to have a college degree for this, but you need to really be able to pass some pretty strict training, which includes, you know, a written test. It requires physical requirements. You know, you need to be a certain height so you can reach those overhead bins and also help people in an emergency. You have additional benefits if you can speak more than one language, but that’s obviously not a requirement. And like you said, you need to be friendly and sociable, presentable and have a well-rounded personality that can deal with people. But one flight attendant who wants to work for Delta told me about how it is easier to get into an Ivy League university than it is to get into a Delta training facility. And that’s not even passing. That’s just people who will try. And so this is by no means an easy career to get into. And then once they get into it, they realize it’s near impossible to make it to the next step.
Krys Boyd [00:04:03] It is not so obvious to passengers on a flight that is uneventful. But the core function of flight attendants is really about safety more than passing out drinks and blankets. What kinds of emergencies are they trained to be able to handle?
Natalie B. Compton [00:04:19] That is really one of the most frustrating things for flight attendants is having that stigma of, you’re just here to serve drinks. You’re here to help me with my bag. They’re actually not supposed to help you with your bag because that can lead to injury. Flight attendants might help you because they have that kindness or they want to speed up the boarding process and make sure everybody can get out on time. But really, their number one job, like you said, is safety. They are needing to remember all of that training, how to prepare the aircraft for certain disasters or, you know, when seatbelts need to go on, when those air masks, those oxygen masks are coming down. How to help passengers with those. I talked to many flight attendants who deal with medical emergencies. So they have to have some basic first aid training. And even people who have only been on the job a short amount of time told me about different situations where somebody has a heart attack on a flight or people are bleeding or people have passed away on flights and in dealing with all of those different situations. Of course, last year was so crazy with different aviation disasters and you need to really be ready for anything, whether that’s an airplane malfunctioning or a medical emergency or unruly passengers, which we’ve seen was a huge issue from 2020 to 2023.
Krys Boyd [00:05:34] Yeah, suddenly they really have to be ready to deal with someone who has a tantrum on a plane.
Natalie B. Compton [00:05:40] Absolutely. People talk to me about how often they had been physically and verbally assaulted by passengers. And you’re just like, please, can we not be hurting these people who are there to literally protect you? They’re not the ones who are in charge of your travel day being horrible. They’re there to help you. But people talked about, you know, it could be anything from telling a passenger they’re cut off. They can’t have more alcohol or telling them it’s not time that you’re allowed to use the lavatory. Right now we are landing. You can’t stand up right now and having people be punched or yelled at or screamed at is part of the job, unfortunately, for a lot of these people.
Krys Boyd [00:06:18] So all this training takes weeks to complete. As you mentioned, not everybody makes it or is offered a job at the end of it. Are people paid for undergoing that training?
Natalie B. Compton [00:06:28] Some airlines pay something for it. A lot of airlines don’t. They might have meal stipends during this. They might cover lunch or breakfast, but not dinner. I talked to a number of Frontier flight attendants who talked about their unpaid training out in it was either North Dakota or Wyoming where this was taking place in the winter. And many of them had flown out from places in the country that do not experience the same kind of cold that that part of the country experiences. And they talked about not having enough money to even go out and have a meal at the end of the training because they were not getting paid. And this is weeks long, months long for some. And they would do a sign up for DoorDash or sign up for a food delivery trial period and order food from Wal-Mart to be able to find the cheapest possible option, because sometimes that was cheaper than even getting an Uber to the Wal-Mart and buying something. So people really struggling to make this make financial sense for them when they’re trying to get a job, but already starting behind because they’re not getting paid during training. That really snowballs for these people who are just trying to get a leg up in a new career.
Krys Boyd [00:07:38] How is it legal to require this training of anybody? You even consider hiring and not pay them for it?
Natalie B. Compton [00:07:44] That’s a great question. And I looked into for this story the legality of of not getting paid for boarding. But we we I did not ask any legal experts. We why can we not be paid for training? Because you’re right. That seems like how is that possible? But what we do know is as far as why aren’t they paid for every hour they are worked, as is the case for, you know, most flight attendants aren’t paid during the boarding process or all that time that they’re stuck waiting at the airport. This is because they do not fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act, because they are considered essential workers. They’re not considered the same kind of employee. As you said, the people who are working at restaurants in the airport or anybody else with a normal job. So because they are under this special umbrella, they are treated differently. And this is something that the unions have told me. They have been working for years to change. But unfortunately, it’s it’s not on the table right now to change.
Krys Boyd [00:08:40] We’ll get more into that in a couple of minutes. But I have to say, your reporting, Natalie, was full of surprises for me, including the way flight attendants are assigned after they’re hired. So generally, it’s not like they go through this training and then get hired for the Phoenix to Tampa trip five days a week. How how does it work that they’re attached to a flight?
Natalie B. Compton [00:09:00] So they will get assigned a base and they can put in a request for I hope I end up at the Charlotte airport, but they might get put at an airline’s different hub city and that can be part of the financial hardship as well. You know, they’re expecting to make a certain wage in a cheaper city, but they get put in a home base of New York City. Suddenly the rent is much more than they anticipated and they need to work a lot more to make that work. And then, like you said, when you are starting out, you are given different trips. You find out your schedule not months in advance to be able to plan your life around it. You might find out a couple of weeks, you might be on reserve and spend a certain number of days out of the week on call and you’ll get a call and you’ll have to report to your home base and you could be flying anywhere. So it is a really chaotic time in an early flight attendant’s life to not be able to be in control of their schedule. They know they’re on call these days, but maybe they’ll get called, maybe they won’t. Which makes it difficult for them to get second jobs. And when the pay is so low and they’re trying to pay rent, they can’t just go become a bartender or work a normal job that requires regular hours because that schedule in the beginning can be so unpredictable.
Krys Boyd [00:10:19] So if rookie flight attendants are working less than full time, despite wanting to work full time because maybe they’re on reserve, as you said, what is the benefits situation? Do they qualify for things like health insurance and sick leave?
Natalie B. Compton [00:10:33] Yes, they they’re still full time employees with the airline. And what they are guaranteed is the, you know, some of the same benefits as the other employees, but they are only guaranteed to make you know, they’re they’re given, okay, you will be making this amount of money per month. 75 flying hours is usually the standard. And if they are able to pick up extra shifts or work longer or have those extra benefits like they speak another language, they’re able to increase their income a little bit. But yes, in the beginning they are still, you know, accruing certain benefits. They are they are penalized for taking too many sick days or calling out or trying to get somebody to cover their shifts. And I talked to multiple flight attendants who talked about I am a single mother and trying to figure out how to make this work and not get penalized for calling off my reserve shift is really putting me behind as well. But it is an incredibly complex employment situation for these people. And when you take a look at their pay stubs, you see all of the, you know, $0.10 here, $2. They are going into different benefits situations and they earn income in a really complicated way.
Krys Boyd [00:11:45] I don’t mean to be flip about this at all, but it needs some context to when you board a flight and think this flight attendant seems to be in quite a mood today.
Natalie B. Compton [00:11:55] It really does. And I think for. My perspective is you go on to an airplane and you have a lot of people who are in the worst mood because they just went through the tumult. They’re not in a great mood either. So a flight attendant is seeing that 240 times as people board a plane. It doesn’t surprise me when somebody is not in the best, most shining mood. And also, when I talk to these flight attendants, somebody talked about how little rest they’re able to get because they are trying to be a parent or work a side job in addition to being a flight attendant. Then they have to go to work. And people are in a stressful mood. I really don’t blame them when they’re not always smiling.
Krys Boyd [00:12:38] So a lot of them you found or a number of them are taking on these side gigs. Literally, they might be driving other people to the airport so that they can afford to make their living working from the airport and traveling the country.
Natalie B. Compton [00:12:52] Gig work is really a flight attendant’s not only option, but it is a more reliable income source than some of the other options that they had out there. But I talked to people who did all kinds of jobs because like I said in the beginning, you’re not making a ton of money. So I talked to people who did film editing, helping on movie sets and trying to get gig work in Hollywood because they were based in L.A. I talked to people who play music in a church band to make a little money. I talked to people who did truck driving. There were all sorts of these side hustles for people. But gig work like Lyft, Uber, Uber eats driving. And even then, people talked about the frustrations of trying to do that in the society where that is becoming more popular. And they notice things like when college kids are back home from break, they notice they got a slowdown in their gig work. And so sometimes even that wasn’t a way that they could guarantee to make all the money they needed for rent that month. But it is a helpful thing where they can get in their car and turn on Lyft and start driving. It’s not a perfect solution, but it was something that many of the flight attendants I talked to said they did.
Krys Boyd [00:14:07] Natalie, how much does the scheduling into the working conditions improve as flight attendants gain seniority over time?
Natalie B. Compton [00:14:14] Over time. People told me that this job becomes amazing, but it can take 12 years into the job before you are seeing that sweet spot where you are able to be fully in control of your schedule. You have seniority so you can say, I want to work these days. I want to give away these shifts. So it is not an overnight, it’s not a two years and I am in a much better position. That’s a decade. It is a long road for these flight attendants to get the job that they signed up for.
Krys Boyd [00:14:46] It sounds like like a medical specialization. Like it’s one thing if you’re going to become like an ophthalmologist or something. But these are not jobs that ever pay all that much. Right.
Natalie B. Compton [00:14:59] Over time, they can be a better paying job. You know, I talked to people who were discussing that over time. You know, you can expect to make $60,000, $70,000. And the more skills that you have, the more seniority you have. Every year you’re getting a little more money. And with those travel perks as well, you know, being able to let your friends and family fly stand by. You fly stand by. For some people, it’s perfect. I did speak to many flight attendants who were making it work, who have partners who have an income. You know, if you’re married or you live with your family. That makes it a much easier job to be able to afford your life on. But for the people, especially who are single mothers, single parents or on their own, it’s really difficult to wait 12 years to be able to make a great income.
Krys Boyd [00:15:52] Yeah, if you are a parent or especially a single parent, I mean, what do flight attendants do with regard to childcare if they have to be away from home overnight or even if their, you know, their are scheduled return is delayed because that happens all the time in the airline industry.
Natalie B. Compton [00:16:10] Most of the people I talked to said they wouldn’t be able to make it work if they didn’t have family members who could help them. I talked to one flight attendant who has been with Alaska Airlines for 16 years who said she had to send her daughter to live with her parents in a totally different city from where she lived, a place that wasn’t even near an airport. So even when she wanted to visit her daughter, that meant getting on a flight to northern California, driving two hours. And so just the the extra hurdle of being a parent in that situation was heartbreaking. Another woman who works again with Alaska Airlines and has been with the airline more than a decade said, If I didn’t live with my sister, this would not be possible. She had escaped an abusive relationship and the father of her children was not somebody she could trust her kids with. She was lucky to have a sister who could watch her three children because, like you said, you can’t just say, well, I think I’m supposed to get back to be able to pick up my child from school at 3 p.m. But if anybody has ever flown before, you know, life does not work out according to an airline schedule. Weather happens, maintenance issues happen. So they really need somebody who is there and around to help them. And as every parent knows, child care is so expensive. So I didn’t talk to anybody who didn’t say family member support is essential to this working out.
Krys Boyd [00:17:33] Your piece made me think about the fact that when there is a flight delay, when we’re all sitting on a runway and we as passengers are frustrated, the flight attendants are probably at least as frustrated as we are, but they can’t show it.
Natalie B. Compton [00:17:46] Nobody wants the flight to go on according to schedule more than a flight attendant. They do not get paid for the most part for most airlines until the boarding doors are closed or the breaks have been released from the aircraft. And so if there’s a delay, they’re not happy about it. They’re not getting paid. They might be getting paid $2 an hour instead of their $20 an hour. They’re not getting paid until they’re getting those flying hours compared to however long they have been in that uniform dress and ready at the airport. And so if there’s a delay and then you’re yelling at the flight attendant, they are just as mad as you are and you do not need to be yelling. It’s a it’s a problem for them, too.
Krys Boyd [00:18:26] Okay. So the time that the flight attendants spend, say, going through security on the way to their plane or waiting around between flights or getting passengers on and off board, that may not count as work at all for purposes of a paycheck.
Natalie B. Compton [00:18:41] No, there for the most part, you know, Delta Airlines pay is 50% of their pay for boarding time. American Airlines just passed a contract that will also include some boarding pay. But for most American domestic airlines, they are getting paid, you know, $2 an hour for any time that they are away from home. And this is shocking to travelers, obviously. And it’s confusing to a lot of flight attendants who say that’s actually the part of the job that often requires the most work. Sure. Doing service throughout the flight is a lot. But getting people on the plane on time, helping people find their seats, sometimes helping out with luggage. That is a ton of work, doing all the safety checks on the airplane, making sure you have the head count that you’re expecting. All of this is a lot of work and nobody would argue otherwise. But they’ve been able to. Airlines have been able to get away with this pay structure for a long time. And it was originally modeled off of what pilots did. And they obviously have a very different job, too. But it is also, I don’t want to say not as fair, but pilots are being paid a significantly higher hourly wage than a flight attendant. So it is it is a harder hurdle for flight attendants to follow that structure.
Krys Boyd [00:20:03] So let’s just take a flight that counts on paper as six hours of flight time, like six hours between the time that door closes and the time it opens back up again. How many hours might a flight attendant actually have to put in of work for that six hours of flight time?
Natalie B. Compton [00:20:21] I mean, they will they will earn whatever they are flying, whatever their hourly rate is. So, you know, for some people, it’s around $20 or so. They might get additional pay to that. If they are the lead flight attendant on a plane, if they have any additional skills, they might add a couple extra bucks on to that hourly wage. And then once they land, then the clock stops again and getting all those people off the plane, getting through the airport again, if anybody stops them to ask them for questions on where baggage claim is all that is again unpaid or that really low per diem of like two bucks an hour. And so they they would prefer a longer actual flight. And for a lot of airlines right now, actually, Frontier in particular, is the one that is causing the most controversy with this. They’re turning more to have flight attendants go out and back in the same day, which adds a lot of that extra unpaid time to a flight attendant’s day. Instead of an older model where a flight attendant might fly three flights in a row, they leave home, they fly to three different cities. That flight time is adding up. That is a more helpful paycheck in the end. And then they go home. But Frontier has been trying to cut their costs and having people go home every day instead of having to pay this $2 per diem for them to stay overnight in a hotel. So but this is a long winded way to say that their flight hours are the most lucrative part of their day. When they’re flying, that’s when their paycheck is really adding up.
Krys Boyd [00:22:00] Are they guaranteed a certain amount of time to rest in that hotel that presumably the airline does pay for that when they’re away from home because they’re flying?
Natalie B. Compton [00:22:08] So they get a per diem that can sometimes if they’re away on an overnight trip, they can maybe expect to add a couple of hundred bucks to their pay, which is great. And that’s what flight attendants are really hoping for. They are. There are, as people may have experienced, if they are at an airport and suddenly somebody says the flight attendants shift has timed out, they need to rest. There are FAA regulations on how long a flight attendant is supposed to rest because we all want people to be safe, like we said, in those medical emergencies, in those malfunctions of an airplane. You want your flight attendant rested. And we can all agree that’s a good thing. What I did, though, discover was if flight attendants aren’t having the luxury of doing those overnight trips with an airline and staying at a hotel, they’re often not getting the rest that the airline thinks they’re getting or that the FAA is hoping between flights because they’re doing that gig work and showing up for work. Very tired. But yes, the FAA does have requirements on on flight attendants need to have a certain amount of rest between flights.
Krys Boyd [00:23:17] I don’t know if this is urban legend or if it’s true, but I heard recently that it’s actually on some very large aircraft, like a space where flight attendants can stretch out and sleep if they have if they’re compelled to take that rest that the FAA required.
Natalie B. Compton [00:23:31] There are some very fun tiktoks that I encourage people to look up on the addictive social media app. It is a fun peek into the layout of some airplanes because yes, people are doing a long haul in particular. There are cubbies almost like you might see in a truck drivers cabin where flight attendants can tuck away and sleep during their required rest. Or really, I mean, I’m sure they would be happy to take the nap, too. But that’s true for both pilots and flight attendants on longer hauls.
Krys Boyd [00:24:06] So when people are signing up for this training and they’re so excited and they’re hoping that they will get a job with a major airline. I mean, I have to imagine that these pay structures are not a secret that is sprung on them the first time they get a paycheck. But you did find people were a little taken aback when they actually started working these jobs and realizing how the money would work.
Natalie B. Compton [00:24:29] The way it’s not. I think people see, I’m supposed to make 20 or $30 an hour. That sounds so high. And like you said, they find once they get the actual paycheck, this is somehow not adding up to what I thought it would be. I they are there usually a brand new flight attendant is given 75 hour minimum a month flight requirement. And even if they don’t actually fly those hours, you know, if the airline doesn’t call them on their on call shift, their paycheck will be guaranteed to meet that 75 hours. I think a lot of flight attendants are under the impression that they will fly more than that. And maybe in training, they are told sometimes mixed messages. You can be able to pick up more things. And so they’re not expecting that 75 hours to be the only income that they have for frontier flight attendants. That base is only $23,000 a year. It’s a it’s a really low number. Also, people talked about how the even just that early training being unpaid set them back. They you know, they were focused on, okay, I know that over time I’m going to be able to make more money. I think I can make it work with the beginning. Then they blow through their savings in the early part of that training or those first months where maybe they need to stay in a hotel in a place that they get stuck in, or they end up spending more money on food that they realized. And and not not always understanding that that really low pay does not go very far. I talked to a Delta flight attendant who talked about having to buy new luggage and make herself more presentable. Sinking costs in early just to become a flight attendant and how that set her back. Or people who have to suddenly get relocated to a new hub. They need to now go find an apartment or go find a crash pad in expensive city where it is difficult to pay rent compared to where they were first living. So there are different factors that make people more surprised by their income. Sometimes they are prepared for it. Sometimes it just is really a different. Reality than they were expecting. Although I did speak to people who said it was clear to them in their training that this is going to be low paying and they had a manager tell them, well, you you can qualify for food stamps at this wage. And so you are encouraged to sign up for these government assistance programs to help make ends meet.
Krys Boyd [00:27:01] Wow. The hunger thing is very surprising. And homelessness, of course, will get to that. But there are people who literally show up for work and they haven’t had enough money to buy a meal and then they’re not supposed to eat any of the the little snacks that are set aside for the passengers either.
Natalie B. Compton [00:27:18] Right. And if most people who have flown economy lately have noticed there are not the same even meals on board as usual, and there’s only so far that a snack pack will go any way. But I did talk to an Alaska Airlines flight attendant who talks about over her years seeing more than one occasion of flight attendants eating somebody’s leftover meal or not having even a dollar to pay for the shuttle from the hotel because they are on such a tight budget and the hunger part really blows your mind. But when you are working in an environment where everything is so expensive, you know, buy a sandwich at the airport, it’s $40, right? It adds up. And one flight attendant told me she watched a another colleague try to stretch like a can of soup over two days. And how people do what they can to meal prep. People try to bring their food with them. They’re not always having access to a refrigerator or being, you know, in one place long enough to to have something that is perishable. So people get really creative. And I also talked to a flight attendant who has arranged a a food drive and a food pantry for flight attendants who are experiencing hunger. So it’s a big enough problem where it didn’t surprise any flight attendant that I talked to that it was happening. And and I talked to people who had benefited from some of that kindness. So it’s it’s totally shocking because, like we said, this sounds like a glamorous, high paying job or at least well-paying you. You don’t think hunger would be a factor in all of this? So it’s it’s heartbreaking, really.
Krys Boyd [00:29:02] If a major reason that people stick it out through this is to get those travel benefits. I’m curious whether they can actually afford to travel. There is more to the cost of going to other countries than just the flight. You have to have money once you get there.
Natalie B. Compton [00:29:18] Yeah, I talked to people who said they they racked up credit card debt easily to because of situations like that, not only not being able to pay bills, but but thinking, I get to travel, plus I’ll just put it on my credit card. And that being dangerous. There was one flight attendant who said, we’re really good at showing the highlight reel, so maybe they will go and have a layover in the Caribbean or in Paris, but they can’t afford to go out and actually do anything. And like you said, the travel perks. Are they going on many vacations? Maybe over time. Once they can afford things, they can be able to do that. But in the first year, it’s really not part of the program for most people who this is their only source of income.
Krys Boyd [00:30:01] Are their schedules flexible to the extent that if they want to take some time off, they can do that? Is it just sure, you can take time off, but you will have no income.
Natalie B. Compton [00:30:10] There are penalties for going outside of what the requirement is with your carrier. I talked to a flight attendant who said she had to work with her manager at Delta to be able to take extended time off for a mental health crisis associated with having a really stressful job and how wires can get crossed. And you could get severely penalized if you are not meeting those minimum requirements of of what your you’re there to do. So people can take time off. They can, you know, apply for leave in some way. But just to be like, I don’t think I want to work this week. It becomes a more difficult situation because you have certain minimum requirements.
Krys Boyd [00:30:55] Natalie, a few minutes ago you mentioned these things called crash pads that flight attendants will go in on. Can you explain what that is?
Natalie B. Compton [00:31:04] So crash pads are. On paper, a way for people to not have a full on rented apartment or home. It’s supposed to be this place for flight attendants to spend a night a few nights out of the month when they are away from home. So a lot of flight attendants might live in one place, but their home base is in a much more expensive city where airlines have their hub, where there’s a big airport. And so they will rent crash pads to be able to. Okay, I’m going to leave my my house, go to my crash pad for the night ahead of my flight. I have a 4 a.m. flight. I want to be able to sleep somewhere closer to the airport. And so these crash pads can be anything from a typical apartment that you share with other people. And you rent a room, other people rent rooms. Or it can look like a hostel where there are 12 bunk beds in a room, blacked out curtains, people coming and going all the time. So this is just a trying to make a second place to live closer to your hub airport more affordable for flight attendants and other, you know, other professions do this too. Sometimes people in the nursing profession or other members of aviation will have these kind of shared accommodations that are supposed to be easier to afford.
Krys Boyd [00:32:27] So it sounds like a reasonable solution. One problem that you discovered was that because it’s not really anyone’s real home, people aren’t so good about keeping these spaces clean and pleasant, like nobody feels really attached enough to maintain these spaces.
Natalie B. Compton [00:32:43] I talked to one flight attendant who described her crash pad as a place where she felt like the owner was trying to make as much money as possible on the space, which, you know, makes sense from a business perspective. But that meant she felt like she was packed in like a sardine. She felt like you said, nobody was feeling like, this is my space, I’m going to clean it. She wondered, did I get bedbugs from this place that I’m sharing with X number of people constantly. Some people have their own bed. Always. Some people will bring sheets or they are told that they are supposed to change the sheets before they go. So cleanliness can be an issue with this. Like any hotel or other kind of accommodation. The more you pay, the nicer you can get. And so not this isn’t an issue for everybody. A feeling like their crash pad is unclean, but because it is that communal space, no one is fully responsible for them, they can get pretty bleak. Or I talked to flight attendants who said, you know, the only one I could afford was out by the airport in this major city. The neighborhood is not safe. So they they aren’t a perfect solution, but they do save people some some money. The other issue with them is that there are supposed to be temporary forms of housing, but because people are struggling to pay rent with rent rising in many parts of the country, they’re trying to make these their primary residence, which is often against crash pad rules. But flight are saying I have no other place to go in. In that case, I spoke with a number of flight attendants who weren’t able to afford any place at all, and some were even living out of their car. So for some people, a crash pad is actually a total luxury and others it’s a it’s an offsetting of their normal rent.
Krys Boyd [00:34:35] I can’t imagine trying to live out of a car and maintain the kind of personal grooming standards that most airlines require.
Natalie B. Compton [00:34:42] And you’re right, it’s not it’s not easy to have to go find another place to do your laundry. I talked to people who said, okay, I go, I can go to the gym, I can go to a YMCA to shower, and that’s where I can be more presentable or I can swing by a friend’s house where maybe I get to stay on an air mattress a few days out of the month and then I’ll go stay in my car. So people juggle this untenable living arrangement, and some say actually living out of my car is safer to park at the airport where it’s often against the rules, but they feel like that is a safer environment. Sometimes they might be able to find places to get dressed or get changed in the airport, too. So it’s a really it’s a it’s not ideal. Like you said, it’s not easy to turn into a flight attendant when you are trying to to scramble from the back of your SUV.
Krys Boyd [00:35:36] Flight attendants. Unions seem to be pretty active. What? What do you know about the overall union membership of the core of flight attendants that serve in this country?
Natalie B. Compton [00:35:49] So the flight attendant unions are very strong and have been working on turning this job into a respected career since flight attendants began. And I think an interesting part of the conversation after talking to people was how, you know, a frustrated public or confused travelers might be like, well, how how are conditions like this if there is a union? And what different union organizers said was we have been fighting just to end the blatant sexism in this job or to make it so that there is a rest period between flights or a minimum number of flight attendants on a plane to be able to deal with emergencies. They’ve been putting together these building blocks to make the job more livable. At the same time, airlines are doing their best to reduce their pay or keep the costs low on their own. So it’s this this push and pull. But it’s a there is a country wide flight attendant union, and then there are different organizations that represent the various you know, Alaska Airlines has a flight attendant union and each one will be different. Delta Airlines does not have a flight attendant union and they are an outlier. But for the rest of the airlines in the United States, you can expect that they are having a union fight for them against the airlines or negotiate with the airlines might be a better way to put that.
Krys Boyd [00:37:19] You mentioned earlier that flight attendants are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Does that mean that they are not permitted legally to strike without fear of losing their jobs permanently?
Natalie B. Compton [00:37:29] They need to be first, they need to vote on a strike. And right now, that is where United Airlines flight attendant union has gotten. They all of their members said, yes, we are in favor of a strike. That doesn’t mean that they can. Just tomorrow, every flight attendant from United walks out of the job and all United flights are grounded. They need to then take it to the National Mediation Board who must approve a strike. It’s a process that isn’t easy, and it is designed to avoid that because this is, like we said, an essential job. This people need to fly for medical care. People need to fly for all kinds of reasons. We need flight attendants. And so it is a trickier road to actually striking. So you might see flight attendants picketing outside of an airport. You might see people having rallies, places. But as far as a walk off, no work strike, it is much harder for flight attendants to do.
Krys Boyd [00:38:30] I realize this can vary from year to year and quarter to quarter, but broadly speaking, are most airlines fairly profitable businesses these days?
Natalie B. Compton [00:38:41] If you look at. The pay of the CEOs of airlines you might think so. Airlines will always say that we are you know, we have to have this pay to make things work or we need to charge travelers $40 for their bag. But we know that after the pandemic, airlines bounce back and they are I don’t want to speak to their actual quarterly statements, but it seems like airlines are in a position where they could pay flight attendants more if they made it a priority.
Krys Boyd [00:39:19] It takes you know, in our minds, it’s just pilots and flight attendants to run an airline. But there are, you know, thousands of other support jobs. So which is to say that I would imagine that flight attendants are not the majority of airline employees would hire hourly wages for flight attendants or an extension of the times. They’re acknowledged to be working and therefore were paid. Would that likely have a big effect on the price we all pay for airline tickets?
Natalie B. Compton [00:39:46] It could. It’s interesting that you mentioned the other airline employees, flight attendants are union represented, you know, a American Airlines flight attendant works directly for American. A lot of other jobs that you see at the airport or are contracted out. You know, the people who push a wheelchair from your American Airlines flight through the airport, they might you might think that they’re with the airline. They’re not. Or people who do some baggage work. So, yes, if if a American Airline flight attendant was to to get a pay raise, could that impact the price of your ticket? That’s. That’s above my pay grade. I, I would not begin to tell you how the intricacies of the business world work. But could they? I’m sure the airlines would say that could be a potential and it would be interesting to ask travelers, would you mind paying $10 more for your flight if it meant the flight attendant had a place to live at night?
Krys Boyd [00:40:46] If some airlines offer a better deal to their flight attendants than others. You know, people who are good at this job could theoretically job hop. But if they go to a competing carrier, do they then lose their seniority?
Natalie B. Compton [00:41:00] That is an issue that some flight attendants said I don’t want to waste all this time I’ve built at Alaska to try to go to Delta. I’m going you are starting over. You have 12 years at Alaska and you start at Delta. You don’t get to be jumping the line. That being said, it’s also just not easy to jump between airlines. I had a frontier flight attendant that I’ve been interviewing for this story over the course of a few months, and she said, my dream is to work for Delta, but she’s applied three times. It hasn’t worked. She made it to the training portion once and and it still wasn’t working. It’s a competitive field. And even though the pay is not great, there are always people who seem to want to do this for now. Maybe if it continues to not improve, that could change. But for now it is super competitive. So even if somebody was trying to bounce around to try to improve their luck, they would like you said, they would have to start over with that seniority and it would be a challenge just to get the job.
Krys Boyd [00:42:08] I don’t mean for this to sound unsympathetic, but I imagine there are people listening wondering why flight attendants who cannot make a decent living don’t just quit and find some other line of work.
Natalie B. Compton [00:42:19] One takeaway from talking to these people who do the job of a flight attendant. People love the job they love even if it is financially super challenging. They love being with people. They think it is something that they’re good at. They enjoy working with other flight attendants. You know, these flight attendants who have set up food banks for their fellow flight attendants or will help them buy a meal for a younger, newer to the job flight attendant who is struggling to to make it work out. There is so much kindness in the profession and flight attendants helping each other that that makes them want to stay longer. Again, that sunk cost fallacy. Okay, well, I’ve put in nine years. If I just make it a little longer, it’s finally going to pay off and then I’m going to have a really flexible schedule and be with my kids more. There is also the thought of what else am I going to do? For some people, this was the first thing they ever did. For some people, they feel like I’m not great with computers. I don’t know what else I would do. I don’t have the skills to get a job in tech. So it’s a different story for every person. And unfortunately, there is no good, you know, one answer fits all. And I talked to other people who have quit. So not everybody stays in. They experience a lot of suffering. I talked to multiple people who were injured out of the job. You know, turbulence happens. You have a fall or one person had been assaulted by a passenger and ended up leaving the profession. So plenty do not everybody is staying in this just for the fun of it. It’s it’s not for everybody.
Krys Boyd [00:43:55] Any signs on the horizon that conditions might improve for flight attendants anytime soon?
Natalie B. Compton [00:44:00] So in August, the Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants Union had a vote on a new contract. They had reached a tentative agreement with the airline and union members, struck it down. And so that was kind of a a high to a low situation. And those agents are feeling kind of stuck. But in September, American Airlines flight attendants reached and ratified a new agreement that included some boarding pay, which was a huge leap and really uplifting for a lot of folks. So we’re seeing some. Fights that are continuing and we’re seeing some progress going in the right direction. And that is that is hopeful. And when we hope to see flight attendants get paid for a really demanding job. As for the rest of the airlines and the other places that don’t have boarding pay or are are threatening to strike, we are still waiting to see what happens. But in the meantime, I think the best thing that travelers can do is give their flight attendants a little patience when you board and remember that they are maybe struggling or maybe just working really hard for not that much money and give them a little grace. Next time you fly.
Krys Boyd [00:45:17] Natalie Compton is a travel reporter for The Washington Post, which published her article “Barely Surviving” about flight attendants facing homelessness and hunger. Natalie, thank you for making time to talk about this.
Natalie B. Compton [00:45:29] Thank you.
Krys Boyd [00:45:30] Think is distributed by PRX the public radio exchange. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and listen to our podcast. Wherever you get podcasts. Just search for KERA Think. Our website is think.kera.org. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
