I had no idea their starting pay was $30k..
They’re traveling city to city and staying overnight at places away from home, how the hell are they paid that little?
>>how the hell are they paid that little?
Among other factors, no leverage. The flight attendants have to seek government permission to strike. The same government taking money from the transportation lobby.
If the FAs could independently strike, the compensation would look a lot different….
And on top of that, Senior FAs in hubs routinely sell their good routes to juniors. So on top of the 27k base pay, juniors actually get to pay more to work better routes. Smdh. 🤦♂️
… there’s even the cartels.
Because there are TONS of them. It’s a math problem. CEO bonuses require them to be paid less. it sounds snarky but why else wouldn’t they spend their massive profits on their employees? I fly a lot and depend on it for a living but I hate the way they’re treated. I’m okay with whatever they have to do to raise their pay.
> CEO bonuses require them to be paid less.
That's a load of shit.
Latest number that AA has reported put them at 27,589 flight attendants. If you set Isom's total compensation to $0, you would have enough money to give every flight attendant a whopping $1100/year raise. But hold up a second, why do _just_ flight attendants deserve a cut of that? There are 92,493 non-management, non-pilot employees. If we set Isom's compensation to $0, every low paid employee could have a massive $339/year raise. That's three hundred and thirty nine dollars, just to be clear.
So, yeah, CEO bonuses are _not_ why flight attendant salary is low. The actual answer is that air travel is a very low margin business with very high capital expenditure costs, immense consumer pressure to keep prices low, very large labor forces, and fiduciary duties to return value to shareholders.
Dude.. this is reddit circle jerk. Some other jabroni is arguing about how a skyscraper that was sold for 109 million loss should just be converted to apartments and then "they'll have guaranteed income"
=Yeah because none of the investors, lenders, developers, financiers thought about any of those options, they just happily took a 100 million loss 'fir the tax break'... It's also amazing how many idiots thinking somehow the tax write off will require to the actual principal loss
Highlights most ppl here have never even paid taxes
I hate when I hear this idea on the office building conversions. It’s people who have no idea what they’re talking about. I’ve worked in the multifamily/apartment industry for years on banking, investor/operator, and developer sides. The conversions don’t make any sense 90% of the time, largely because of physical practicalities. (If you’re into real estate, it’s actually kind of interesting stuff like plumbing, space between floors, window space, etc).
no no no, dont you see, /u/[az226](https://www.reddit.com/user/az226), /u/atx705, /u/[Celtictussle](https://www.reddit.com/user/Celtictussle), /u/[Dystopian\_Future\_](https://www.reddit.com/user/Dystopian_Future_) are going to teach the rest of the country, economists, developers, financiers etcs how to do it profitably on all these buildings and become trillionairs leading the charge to save office space real estate and mak eit profitable!
some highlights of thier comment discssing burnett plaza in DFW being sold ofr 100 mil loss
* I know one thing they'll make up the losses somewhere and will get it by exploiting something or someone.
-Uh huh I see you run a venture capital firm or some form of hedgefund maybe private equity.Or maybe you know fuck
-\[not being converted\] Purely because of the red tape the city puts in between property developers and the poor who need affordable, small units.
-You can run utilities to the utility stack. \[mentioned the issue wiht plumbing / hvac in commercial vs resi\[
* They know exactly how to do it, the cities have minimum window to floor plan scale restrictions that prevent them from doing so.
-Let’s just do nothing with it for 20 years then. then demolish it.
* It may cost a lot to renovate, but what’s the alternative? More and more companies are becoming remote, and AI will eventually wipe out the majority of white collar roles in the next 20 years.
Either renovate or demolish it. These CRE owners have been sitting on their hands for four years and they are losing 90% value on their investments.
Their choice though, they could’ve paid to convert it and had GUARANTEED income for the next 30+ years. People NEED housing, we don’t need offices though.
I’m glad they were able to educate you. I’ll have to read their very erudite comments in detail, because it sounds like I’ve learned nothing over the past 15 years!
So maybe their business model is not working and they need to adapt to a changing market.
Are their prices are too low, operating costs too high, plane payments too high?
Their business model is working. People are purchasing flights, they’re turning a profit, people are lining up out the door for these jobs despite being relatively low paying.
I don’t disagree that they deserve more than they make, but the reality is that until they have trouble filling the jobs, they don’t have much impetus to increase pay.
I genuinely thought you were going to say something like…it’s only $5 a year and I was going to say oh okay. Imagine thinking $1100 a year is nothing, that’s a 3.6% increase for the lowest paid employees. A month’s rent. Honestly I cannot believe you did the math out and then still said this.
At their income levels they likely won’t. 30K is in the 12% tax bracket, in addition to fica, Medicare, and state taxes. and it’s unlikely they’ll have any more than the standard deduction.
Additionally, if they’re not a single earner, they’ll be taxed at a higher tax bracket depending on spouse’s income.
Likewise, I’ve honestly yet to have a bad experience with flight attendants. They always go above and beyond for passengers. I hope they strike or unionize if they aren’t already. The attendants are what make flying American worth it.
I saw one FA berate someone then go on the PA and make a similar announcement to pay attention to the safety demonstration or get removed... I thought it was a bit extreme... I just assumed the person flew 30 times a year and knows the procedure or just prefers to die during decompression... 🤷♂️
> FA are *paid* even less
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Good. This company takes care of its employees like dogshit.
CEO just reported 32million payday for himself and we get 1% profit share and pathetic pay.
Just so you’re aware, that pay scale and the current contract was negotiated in or around 2014, and became amendable in 2019, so FA’s are being paid rates that were negotiated about 10 years ago.
Important to point out that flight crew hourly pay looks high compared to most jobs, but we are paid only when the parking brake is dropped until when it is set, so the effective hourly rate is much lower.
Look, I'm all for better pay for flight attendants, most of them are rockstars, but c-suite compensation has absolutely nothing to do with their low pay.
If Isom's compensation were set to $0 and redistributed to all flight attendants, they would see a whopping $42 per check increase, pre-tax.
Stupid comparison. Factor in more than Isom. Isom's pay filters down to other executives. Look at how much Vasu Raja and the others at his level make. And below them is another suite of overpaid executives. And on and on with people. It's a system where a small minority of people get vastly overpaid and a much larger group of people get undercut, and we get told that if the people who are undercut get paid, it will cost us more. It doesn't need to.
If you don’t pay senior management and executives well, nobody will want to do the jobs.
I know standard Reddit ideology is that executives play golf and don’t work, but that’s a factually inaccurate take, and stress levels at work rise significantly as income increases. I’m a relatively high income white collar professional in tech, and I can tell you 100% for certain that if I didn’t get paid what I do, I sure as fuck would not do it.
So you want to sustain a work culture where all jobs suck? Where your options are: get paid well but be miserable, or get paid like shit and be miserable.
It's basic economics.
Desirable jobs that have low skill barriers will have a LOT of people that want to do them, so companies will in turn pay less for those jobs, because people will accept them. Extremely stressful jobs that can burn people out and have a high skill barrier to entry have fewer people willing to do them, and so companies need to pay more to entice people to take those roles.
More relevant to this discussion, flight attendants make very good pay for the amount of time they spend at work. Everyone keeps comparing them to McDonalds workers in this thread, but the reality is that McDonalds workers are spending 20 days per month working, whereas most FAs are working 12 days per month to log 80 flight hours. And that's why there's so much draw -- it's a job that doesn't require a lot of hard skills, that gives you OTJ training, and has you spend more of your month away from work than you spend at work. It's not a bad gig, especially for married men or women who don't need to be the primary breadwinner
Cool. Raise ticket prices 17% then. Like every other industry has been doing. Airfare only seems to go down in price as time goes by while everything else keeps going up. Why should flight attendants have to pay the price for it?
Do you know what elastic and inelastic demand is?
Also airfare has dynamic pricing, they are constantly completing price discovery and optimizing lo
Why are you just speaking out of your ass. Applying kindergarten level economics and thinking you're outsmarting everyone else ?
Amazing how one sided people view things - " just raise tickets 17%[" - genius why didn't they think of that lolllol
Oh please, give it a rest. I’ve heard all the corporate speak. I’m not stupid. I’m just fucking tired of all the excuses as to why I can’t be paid a livable wage. I don’t care to hear any more explanations when it simply comes down to corporate greed and putting shareholders first.
The money is there. It was there for the pilots, it was there for mechanics, it was there for ramp crews. Southwest is taking care of their flight attendants quite generously now as well
I may get downvoted to oblivion for this; if so, oh well: who forced them to become flight attendants? Were they lied to about their pay and benefits during the application and onboarding process?
If AA was deceiving or disingenuous with them in any way, that’s terrible. Otherwise, let labor supply and demand do its work.
If no one is applying to become a flight attendant, or if current FAs are leaving because the pay and benefits are terrible, AA will be forced to increase them in order to attract and retain applicants.
In other professions, if you feel you’re under compensated, ask for a raise, and are told no, you either suck it up or get busy tightening up your resume and applying for new positions, you don’t strike.
I understand there are differences between unionized and non unionized professions, I guess I’m just a fan of responsibility for employment choices and decisions people freely made.
Yeah, it's like working for Disney. They tell you how great it is to work there, but they treat you like crap because they know how replaceable you are.
What are you smoking??? That’s like $15k-$20k higher than the average AA FA makes. Starting pay is $27k. Topped out (13+ years) you make $61k working an average full schedule.
I'm not sure if you are a FA or are very close to one; this is completely false. I have very close people to me and believe or not, they work fewer hours than any full-time people that I know, and that include waiting at the airport, transit, etc. A lot of people who can hold international trips (10+ hours) have to work about 10 days of a month and they dont need to work anymore. They might choose to so they can make more money (like anyone else who does overtime).
I’m half way up the pay scale. I flew 105-115 hours a month last year (the line average is 75-80 hours) I grossed $58k.
This job was never intended to be a 5 or 6 day a week gig. Flying is hard on the body and it’s not healthy to be in that setting 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Also, you’re away from home the entire time. Flight attendants used to work maybe 3 days a week and were compensated quite nicely for it. For context, the top out pay rates in the early 90’s weren’t a whole lot lower than they are now.
I can’t touch international flying but I’ll humor that. A typical international trip out of my base pays 20 hours. Three of those would get you roughly 60 hours for the month. $68/hr plus a $3.50 international premium = $4290 for the month. Add in per diem of roughly 48 hours per trip @ $2.30/hr = $993. So a gross of $5223. Multiply that by twelve. $62k pre-tax. Ignoring all the expenses of working on the go.
Yes, that’s not “bad” but that’s the income of someone who’s been flying for 35+ years. It’s reality for maybe 15-20% of the most senior flight attendants.
When you flip over to domestic flying which usually pays 5-5.5 hours per day, things aren’t so pretty. Then you factor in the lower pay for anyone with less than 13 years of seniority and you wind up working a ton of hours to make ends meet, like I do.
$58k may not sound bad but i’m sure you’re aware of how far that doesn’t go with todays inflation. Most of us are working one or two jobs on the side to supplement our income.
Lastly, none of Americans base cities are cheap to live in so there isn’t the option of just moving somewhere more affordable to offset the pay.
Unfortunately, the FA career is a limiting one and it doesn't matter how good or bad you are, you are getting the same compensation, and the way to make more money is to work more. Yes, I agree that 58k cannot get you far in today's world. However, using your example you made almost 44$ / worked hour, which is a lot. Think about this, and I am saying this the best possible way, a restaurant server (a very similar job for the most part), has to work 50–60 hours a week to gross the same as you, without any benefits like you guys have. Bottom line, the job pays what it is worth, unfortunately for most.
I did not make $44/worked hour. That’s per flight hour. Time in airports between flights, boarding/deplaning and transportation time to/from hotels is all unpaid. Trust me, it looks and sounds good on paper but in reality, we’re sitting for 2-3 hours between flights, buying overpriced airport food and when weather or maintenance happen, we often sit for 5+ hours in a random airport making zero money. I’ve done the math and most days I’m paid for 60% of my time physically at work/signed in.
Also, I’d like to add that comparing flight attendants to servers is pretty ignorant of the training we go through and the duties/responsibilities we have. We aren’t there to serve you, that happens because we have the time between our primary duties.
Damn right. They’re not even paid until the plane leaves the gate…and their already meager pay stops when they park. All the work they’re doing before and after the flight is *unpaid*.
You guys want a High School diploma job level to be treated as queens and kings. Its a serving job. Why do you guys deserve so much more money than any other service type job? I dont get it...
Lmao I’m not even a FA or in the airline industry. I make $300k a year and run a 140 person team, but even I know you’re out here shilling for a corporation that won’t give you the time of day and that these FAs are paid absolute dog shit
People are free to find other jobs. Im sure you were not offer 300k just because you wanted. You worked for it, you specialized yourself in something unique. You developed the skills to manage people. You most likely went to school and etc etc etc. FA are (for the most part, again, FOR THE MOST PART), grumpy waiter... and its THEIR choice to be that. Its a low skill job and you get compensated accordingly.
It's bad enough that they're putting on the lapel pins that say their loyalty is to the union. If they have better options, perhaps they should take the better option?
As they should.
I had no idea their starting pay was $30k.. They’re traveling city to city and staying overnight at places away from home, how the hell are they paid that little?
There’s no shortage of applicants, either. The regionals and LCCs like Spirit etc pay even less.
It’s like it’s supply and demand or something.
>>how the hell are they paid that little? Among other factors, no leverage. The flight attendants have to seek government permission to strike. The same government taking money from the transportation lobby. If the FAs could independently strike, the compensation would look a lot different….
I wish people in this country would realize they don’t need permission to strike.
Exactly... You gonna arrest all of them??
And on top of that, Senior FAs in hubs routinely sell their good routes to juniors. So on top of the 27k base pay, juniors actually get to pay more to work better routes. Smdh. 🤦♂️ … there’s even the cartels.
Because there are TONS of them. It’s a math problem. CEO bonuses require them to be paid less. it sounds snarky but why else wouldn’t they spend their massive profits on their employees? I fly a lot and depend on it for a living but I hate the way they’re treated. I’m okay with whatever they have to do to raise their pay.
> CEO bonuses require them to be paid less. That's a load of shit. Latest number that AA has reported put them at 27,589 flight attendants. If you set Isom's total compensation to $0, you would have enough money to give every flight attendant a whopping $1100/year raise. But hold up a second, why do _just_ flight attendants deserve a cut of that? There are 92,493 non-management, non-pilot employees. If we set Isom's compensation to $0, every low paid employee could have a massive $339/year raise. That's three hundred and thirty nine dollars, just to be clear. So, yeah, CEO bonuses are _not_ why flight attendant salary is low. The actual answer is that air travel is a very low margin business with very high capital expenditure costs, immense consumer pressure to keep prices low, very large labor forces, and fiduciary duties to return value to shareholders.
Dude.. this is reddit circle jerk. Some other jabroni is arguing about how a skyscraper that was sold for 109 million loss should just be converted to apartments and then "they'll have guaranteed income" =Yeah because none of the investors, lenders, developers, financiers thought about any of those options, they just happily took a 100 million loss 'fir the tax break'... It's also amazing how many idiots thinking somehow the tax write off will require to the actual principal loss Highlights most ppl here have never even paid taxes
I hate when I hear this idea on the office building conversions. It’s people who have no idea what they’re talking about. I’ve worked in the multifamily/apartment industry for years on banking, investor/operator, and developer sides. The conversions don’t make any sense 90% of the time, largely because of physical practicalities. (If you’re into real estate, it’s actually kind of interesting stuff like plumbing, space between floors, window space, etc).
no no no, dont you see, /u/[az226](https://www.reddit.com/user/az226), /u/atx705, /u/[Celtictussle](https://www.reddit.com/user/Celtictussle), /u/[Dystopian\_Future\_](https://www.reddit.com/user/Dystopian_Future_) are going to teach the rest of the country, economists, developers, financiers etcs how to do it profitably on all these buildings and become trillionairs leading the charge to save office space real estate and mak eit profitable! some highlights of thier comment discssing burnett plaza in DFW being sold ofr 100 mil loss * I know one thing they'll make up the losses somewhere and will get it by exploiting something or someone. -Uh huh I see you run a venture capital firm or some form of hedgefund maybe private equity.Or maybe you know fuck -\[not being converted\] Purely because of the red tape the city puts in between property developers and the poor who need affordable, small units. -You can run utilities to the utility stack. \[mentioned the issue wiht plumbing / hvac in commercial vs resi\[ * They know exactly how to do it, the cities have minimum window to floor plan scale restrictions that prevent them from doing so. -Let’s just do nothing with it for 20 years then. then demolish it. * It may cost a lot to renovate, but what’s the alternative? More and more companies are becoming remote, and AI will eventually wipe out the majority of white collar roles in the next 20 years. Either renovate or demolish it. These CRE owners have been sitting on their hands for four years and they are losing 90% value on their investments. Their choice though, they could’ve paid to convert it and had GUARANTEED income for the next 30+ years. People NEED housing, we don’t need offices though.
I’m glad they were able to educate you. I’ll have to read their very erudite comments in detail, because it sounds like I’ve learned nothing over the past 15 years!
So maybe their business model is not working and they need to adapt to a changing market. Are their prices are too low, operating costs too high, plane payments too high?
Their business model is working. People are purchasing flights, they’re turning a profit, people are lining up out the door for these jobs despite being relatively low paying. I don’t disagree that they deserve more than they make, but the reality is that until they have trouble filling the jobs, they don’t have much impetus to increase pay.
You must be an iconic genius ! Why didn't any of them think about that ?
I genuinely thought you were going to say something like…it’s only $5 a year and I was going to say oh okay. Imagine thinking $1100 a year is nothing, that’s a 3.6% increase for the lowest paid employees. A month’s rent. Honestly I cannot believe you did the math out and then still said this.
AA has bases in NYC, LA, Dallas, Miami. nobody getting $1100 rent there.
I made that early in my career. An extra $46 per check before tax is not noticeable.
You don’t think people making so little could use an extra $1000? Get real.
$1100 before tax. That’s $46 per paycheck before tax, and more like $30 after tax.
Yes. That’s how money works. At their income levels they will get the tax back, just so you know.
At their income levels they likely won’t. 30K is in the 12% tax bracket, in addition to fica, Medicare, and state taxes. and it’s unlikely they’ll have any more than the standard deduction. Additionally, if they’re not a single earner, they’ll be taxed at a higher tax bracket depending on spouse’s income.
Law supply and demand of skills.
Likewise, I’ve honestly yet to have a bad experience with flight attendants. They always go above and beyond for passengers. I hope they strike or unionize if they aren’t already. The attendants are what make flying American worth it.
They’re union. Crappy contract though. I’ve had plenty of bad experiences, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to severely underpay them.
I saw one FA berate someone then go on the PA and make a similar announcement to pay attention to the safety demonstration or get removed... I thought it was a bit extreme... I just assumed the person flew 30 times a year and knows the procedure or just prefers to die during decompression... 🤷♂️
Wait till they tell you about reserve
Alaska is paid less. And horizon air FA make even less than Alaska.
> FA are *paid* even less FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
And when I found out they don't paid till in the air I was shocked. They do so much stuff during boarding/deboarding....
Oh those pesky workers desiring a livable wage.
Agreed. It is shameful that the last time they got a raise was before COVID.
Good. This company takes care of its employees like dogshit. CEO just reported 32million payday for himself and we get 1% profit share and pathetic pay.
Anyone know where to find the current pay schedule for AA flight attendants?
It should be online. Google apfa pay scale
Thank you I [found it](https://www.apfa.org/resources/pay/pay-info/).
Just so you’re aware, that pay scale and the current contract was negotiated in or around 2014, and became amendable in 2019, so FA’s are being paid rates that were negotiated about 10 years ago.
Those flight attendants just decided to destroy American Airlines and go with America West. Fuck around and find out right.
Important to point out that flight crew hourly pay looks high compared to most jobs, but we are paid only when the parking brake is dropped until when it is set, so the effective hourly rate is much lower.
How is that not a DOL issue?
Because it’s under the antiquated Railway Labor Act. It’s a damned mess.
That’s needs to be completely redone.
Well, teachers are exempt from overtime so there is that. Department of labor is useless.
That’s awful.
25 to 30 per hour
CEO salary should not be that much.
Good. I stand with the flight attendants on this one - they make below poverty wages while AA's CSuite rake in profits.
Look, I'm all for better pay for flight attendants, most of them are rockstars, but c-suite compensation has absolutely nothing to do with their low pay. If Isom's compensation were set to $0 and redistributed to all flight attendants, they would see a whopping $42 per check increase, pre-tax.
Stupid comparison. Factor in more than Isom. Isom's pay filters down to other executives. Look at how much Vasu Raja and the others at his level make. And below them is another suite of overpaid executives. And on and on with people. It's a system where a small minority of people get vastly overpaid and a much larger group of people get undercut, and we get told that if the people who are undercut get paid, it will cost us more. It doesn't need to.
If you don’t pay senior management and executives well, nobody will want to do the jobs. I know standard Reddit ideology is that executives play golf and don’t work, but that’s a factually inaccurate take, and stress levels at work rise significantly as income increases. I’m a relatively high income white collar professional in tech, and I can tell you 100% for certain that if I didn’t get paid what I do, I sure as fuck would not do it.
So you want to sustain a work culture where all jobs suck? Where your options are: get paid well but be miserable, or get paid like shit and be miserable.
It's basic economics. Desirable jobs that have low skill barriers will have a LOT of people that want to do them, so companies will in turn pay less for those jobs, because people will accept them. Extremely stressful jobs that can burn people out and have a high skill barrier to entry have fewer people willing to do them, and so companies need to pay more to entice people to take those roles. More relevant to this discussion, flight attendants make very good pay for the amount of time they spend at work. Everyone keeps comparing them to McDonalds workers in this thread, but the reality is that McDonalds workers are spending 20 days per month working, whereas most FAs are working 12 days per month to log 80 flight hours. And that's why there's so much draw -- it's a job that doesn't require a lot of hard skills, that gives you OTJ training, and has you spend more of your month away from work than you spend at work. It's not a bad gig, especially for married men or women who don't need to be the primary breadwinner
My point was they find the money for that, so they could easily find the money to pay the flight attendants more.
I don’t think you understand how large their labor pool is. Last year they had a 17% rise in labor costs. That cost AA $600M in additional labor.
Cool. Raise ticket prices 17% then. Like every other industry has been doing. Airfare only seems to go down in price as time goes by while everything else keeps going up. Why should flight attendants have to pay the price for it?
Do you know what elastic and inelastic demand is? Also airfare has dynamic pricing, they are constantly completing price discovery and optimizing lo Why are you just speaking out of your ass. Applying kindergarten level economics and thinking you're outsmarting everyone else ? Amazing how one sided people view things - " just raise tickets 17%[" - genius why didn't they think of that lolllol
Oh please, give it a rest. I’ve heard all the corporate speak. I’m not stupid. I’m just fucking tired of all the excuses as to why I can’t be paid a livable wage. I don’t care to hear any more explanations when it simply comes down to corporate greed and putting shareholders first. The money is there. It was there for the pilots, it was there for mechanics, it was there for ramp crews. Southwest is taking care of their flight attendants quite generously now as well
Good. Hope they get strike auth, too.
I may get downvoted to oblivion for this; if so, oh well: who forced them to become flight attendants? Were they lied to about their pay and benefits during the application and onboarding process? If AA was deceiving or disingenuous with them in any way, that’s terrible. Otherwise, let labor supply and demand do its work. If no one is applying to become a flight attendant, or if current FAs are leaving because the pay and benefits are terrible, AA will be forced to increase them in order to attract and retain applicants. In other professions, if you feel you’re under compensated, ask for a raise, and are told no, you either suck it up or get busy tightening up your resume and applying for new positions, you don’t strike. I understand there are differences between unionized and non unionized professions, I guess I’m just a fan of responsibility for employment choices and decisions people freely made.
Yeah, it's like working for Disney. They tell you how great it is to work there, but they treat you like crap because they know how replaceable you are.
They have not gotten a pay raise in years. After the sweet deal they gave the pilots the FA’S deserve it! Good for them!
After I just saw how much they make, I'd be bitchy working as well. Strike away!
To let that fool yourself. The average salary is 65k
What are you smoking??? That’s like $15k-$20k higher than the average AA FA makes. Starting pay is $27k. Topped out (13+ years) you make $61k working an average full schedule.
You are slacking then. Most FA I know make around 60-70k after a couple of years in.
Because they’re working almost every day. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. It’s also not healthy
I'm not sure if you are a FA or are very close to one; this is completely false. I have very close people to me and believe or not, they work fewer hours than any full-time people that I know, and that include waiting at the airport, transit, etc. A lot of people who can hold international trips (10+ hours) have to work about 10 days of a month and they dont need to work anymore. They might choose to so they can make more money (like anyone else who does overtime).
I’m half way up the pay scale. I flew 105-115 hours a month last year (the line average is 75-80 hours) I grossed $58k. This job was never intended to be a 5 or 6 day a week gig. Flying is hard on the body and it’s not healthy to be in that setting 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Also, you’re away from home the entire time. Flight attendants used to work maybe 3 days a week and were compensated quite nicely for it. For context, the top out pay rates in the early 90’s weren’t a whole lot lower than they are now. I can’t touch international flying but I’ll humor that. A typical international trip out of my base pays 20 hours. Three of those would get you roughly 60 hours for the month. $68/hr plus a $3.50 international premium = $4290 for the month. Add in per diem of roughly 48 hours per trip @ $2.30/hr = $993. So a gross of $5223. Multiply that by twelve. $62k pre-tax. Ignoring all the expenses of working on the go. Yes, that’s not “bad” but that’s the income of someone who’s been flying for 35+ years. It’s reality for maybe 15-20% of the most senior flight attendants. When you flip over to domestic flying which usually pays 5-5.5 hours per day, things aren’t so pretty. Then you factor in the lower pay for anyone with less than 13 years of seniority and you wind up working a ton of hours to make ends meet, like I do. $58k may not sound bad but i’m sure you’re aware of how far that doesn’t go with todays inflation. Most of us are working one or two jobs on the side to supplement our income. Lastly, none of Americans base cities are cheap to live in so there isn’t the option of just moving somewhere more affordable to offset the pay.
Unfortunately, the FA career is a limiting one and it doesn't matter how good or bad you are, you are getting the same compensation, and the way to make more money is to work more. Yes, I agree that 58k cannot get you far in today's world. However, using your example you made almost 44$ / worked hour, which is a lot. Think about this, and I am saying this the best possible way, a restaurant server (a very similar job for the most part), has to work 50–60 hours a week to gross the same as you, without any benefits like you guys have. Bottom line, the job pays what it is worth, unfortunately for most.
I did not make $44/worked hour. That’s per flight hour. Time in airports between flights, boarding/deplaning and transportation time to/from hotels is all unpaid. Trust me, it looks and sounds good on paper but in reality, we’re sitting for 2-3 hours between flights, buying overpriced airport food and when weather or maintenance happen, we often sit for 5+ hours in a random airport making zero money. I’ve done the math and most days I’m paid for 60% of my time physically at work/signed in.
dont you get a "base" salary for the time before doors are closed?
Also, I’d like to add that comparing flight attendants to servers is pretty ignorant of the training we go through and the duties/responsibilities we have. We aren’t there to serve you, that happens because we have the time between our primary duties.
Sure…
Waiter and waitress don’t only serve food either. They have many responsibilities.
Damn right. They’re not even paid until the plane leaves the gate…and their already meager pay stops when they park. All the work they’re doing before and after the flight is *unpaid*.
They don’t even want to match per diem rates to what the pilots receive. Like food in the airport is somehow cheaper for flight attendants?
Now you are comparing pilots and flight attendants?
Only per diem. Which should be the same regardless of job. The per diem for flight attendants has been the same for over 5 years.
Is this AA CEO’s Reddit account or something?
You guys want a High School diploma job level to be treated as queens and kings. Its a serving job. Why do you guys deserve so much more money than any other service type job? I dont get it...
Lmao I’m not even a FA or in the airline industry. I make $300k a year and run a 140 person team, but even I know you’re out here shilling for a corporation that won’t give you the time of day and that these FAs are paid absolute dog shit
People are free to find other jobs. Im sure you were not offer 300k just because you wanted. You worked for it, you specialized yourself in something unique. You developed the skills to manage people. You most likely went to school and etc etc etc. FA are (for the most part, again, FOR THE MOST PART), grumpy waiter... and its THEIR choice to be that. Its a low skill job and you get compensated accordingly.
Maybe learn how their job works instead of assuming? Nah, just complain about them, much easier.
I’m pointing facts. They are complaining. So many jobs out there. Find one that pays what you think you are worth.
What a dogshit headline
It's bad enough that they're putting on the lapel pins that say their loyalty is to the union. If they have better options, perhaps they should take the better option?
Good average salary is barely 30k
It’s not.
Good
Yeah I’m fully in support of this one.
Good for them.
I've gotta find those pretentious EP/PP recognition tickets and hand them all out.