A United Airlines flight attendant has penned an essay explaining why it may appear that flight attendants do not like their jobs. As a new collective bargaining agreement remains unsigned, flight attendants are grappling with low morale and frustration in the Friendly Skies.

United Airlines Flight Attendant Explains Why Morale Has Collapsed

Here’s the comment (a comment that turned into an essay):

Our contract expired in 2021. Senior FAs haven’t had a raise in four years despite record inflation. New hire FAs are living in poverty.

New hires are sent to some of the highest cost of living cities in the US to be on call for 24 hours day and night on ready reserve days. They can expect to make about $30-40k their first year. A lot of flight attendants are effectively homeless and make it work with layovers, friends, and/or a crash pad (a shared living situation – my first in SFO had 25 people, 12 in my room, and I paid $400/mo).

On top of that, our work group has effectively no leverage in these contract negotiations. We just voted down a bad faith first proposal overwhelmingly, but where does that leave us? It will be 6+ months before we see the next proposal. And if we vote that down, can we go on strike? No. The Railway Labor Act makes federal government approval a requirement for us to strike. Pretty sure Trump hung a massive portrait of himself outside the Department of Labor yesterday, lol. Because of this dynamic, things aren’t looking great for a future second proposal, which was the best argument to vote yes on this sh*tty first proposal.

Last year, 99.99% of our work group voted that they’d approve a strike (I did the math, 2 FAs voted no, and I’m convinced they fat fingered it). It’s bad vibes at UA in 2025.

I started in 2018. Things used to be a lot better in terms of morale and schedule flexibility, but it was still hard my first few years just to find a room to rent and afford the basics. It’s still hard for me now. I feel so bad for new hires today.

On top of all that, the world has lost its damn mind. Collective American insanity really seems to manifest on the plane and at the airport where we force people of all stripes to cram together, shut up, and comply with FAA regulations, because we’re all too poor to fly private.

I have my qualms about the company, but I always try to do a good job and make it a positive experience for the passengers and the crew. The crew probably just met and has to learn to work together for the next few days, before saying goodbye and doing it all over again with a new crew.

I wasn’t prepared for how isolating this job was going to be. It definitely has its pros – pros like flight benefits will always keep a pile of fresh applications at the ready, even though the flight benefits are getting harder to use – but it is an underpaid, often thankless job that is hard on the body/mind.

I’ve seen United f*ck over passengers and crew for four summers in a row during “meltdowns” (CEO Scott Kirby flew his family private to vacation during one of these). These could easily be avoided or mitigated with simple staffing improvements. For instance, during these meltdowns 4+ hour hold times are the norm for a crew member to speak to a scheduler and see where they’re supposed to work after chaos destroyed their original trip, leaving them stranded somewhere. I’ve seen screenshots of hold times over 12 hours (better believe this is unpaid time). This results in crews timing out. Then, your flight gets canceled, along with all the dominos that fall down line from that cancellation. Those schedulers probably make $20-30 an hour.

United! Why are you doing $1.5 billion share buy backs and bragging about record profits?! Hire more schedulers for f*cks sake! Pay your flight attendants a living wage!

I kind of understood in 2022… coming out of Covid will take time. But now it’s clear to me, the only thing that matters is the share price going up. Good leads the way, my ass.

There are so many lovely, smart, caring people working at United. It’s a shame that a corporation isn’t like a person at all. It will suck every dollar out of a situation, staring at us humans with an unblinking smile the whole way. This seems to culminate in the destruction of a planet, but that’s a different conversation.

I often imagine an executive discussion about the food served on the plane going something like, “How cheaply and badly can we make this chicken shakshuka so people will still occasionally eat it and we won’t get sued?”

Thanks for making your post and being curious about the FAs.

(Last thing, you probably know this, but during boarding– usually the most hectic part of the day — we aren’t paid a dime. Those four-hour delays in EWR that are so common now? Yeah, longer day, usually zero extra dollars paid.)

CONCLUSION

I’m not going to analyze this note line-by-line now…it speaks for itself. I’ll only add that there remains a huge supply/demand imbalance between open positions and interest in becoming a United flight attendant. That itself will always (and should always) be a check on wages. But it’s no good that junior flight attendants can barely make ends in meet because they have not seen a wage increase in several years while inflation has certainly been eroding purchasing power. And the flight attendant is correct that while United has invested a great deal in technology, its crew scheduling software still has a ways to go…I’ve heard from many flight attendants about the long hold times when the airline is suffering operational issues. Furthermore, though, contrary to what some may think I am not anti-union and I am certainly pro-flight attendant. Flight attendants must eventually ask themselves why the AFA-CWA has been so deficient in its duty to deliver an industry-leading contract to United flight attendants.

Finally, I am grateful for United flight attendants…I just flew United this week and had two excellent crews. I can understand why morale is low now…but it certainly did not show on my flights. I hope that the FAs at United will soon have a new signed contract.