It’s still looked at as a “glamor job”. What other gig lets you travel everywhere and have hotels paid for in metropolitan areas around the world? It can be pretty cool if you get a good crew, it doesn’t feel much like work on the good days. See the sights, bring home a bunch of international goodies for the family and friends, it can be great!
The flip side is:
The glamor wears off quick after you realize that you’re not staying over in London, NYC, Tokyo or any other attractive international destination after one flight there, a long layover, then one flight back. You’re junior so you don’t have a planned flight schedule for the month, on call for 4,5,6 days in a row, you’ve been assigned a couple day-trips necessitating trips to the airport early in the AM and not getting done until late at night, then get assigned a multi-day 12+ leg trip that has you overnighting in Pittsburgh, Midland Texas, and Raleigh NC. You’re exhausted, got reassigned thanks to weather delays, now you’ve got a Fresno overnight instead of Pittsburgh, all the passengers have been a PITA because it’s your fault the airline can’t control the weather. No food because of the delays and you’ve been running from flight to flight and you have been subsisting on diet coke and pretzels, tired because the overnights have been whittled down to minimum rest, and when you finally get to your two days off you have to commute home, feed the cat, do laundry, sleep in your own bed for one night and then commute back to base to be ready for your next on-call stretch. (many crew don’t “live” in base, you can’t afford to live in a NYC airline base on $27k a year, they get a crashpad, usually shared with multiple roomates to defray the cost of a place you just need to hang out at for the night before a trip you can’t fly in for same-day or wait for a on-call assignment).
So a LOT of flight attendants don’t survive the first few years when they realize that you need to be at the airline for probably 25+ years before you might approach the “glamor” side, the pay sucks, being on-call (reserve) for years and years… You can actually make decent money if you tough it out, but it;s a long road. People like the image, but it’s a really steep price to finally make it to good.
I work for the railroad and it’s a very similar story. The way we treat people in the transportation industry is unsustainable and frankly quite dangerous. Having to be on call six days a week with no guarantee if you even are going to be home on the seventh really makes you feel like a second class citizen. At one point in time these types of jobs were appealing because the pay and benefits more than made up for the abusive work schedule but now you are lucky if your pay increases even cover the cost of inflation. I’m sure the airline unions have the same issues the railroad unions have where benifits get widdled away as those with seniority sell out the new hires for deals that only benefit those already employed. Our unions have been doing that for such a long period of time it’s almost unfathomable to hear what benifits we used to have.
Not a FA, but FWIW:
It’s still looked at as a “glamor job”. What other gig lets you travel everywhere and have hotels paid for in metropolitan areas around the world? It can be pretty cool if you get a good crew, it doesn’t feel much like work on the good days. See the sights, bring home a bunch of international goodies for the family and friends, it can be great!
The flip side is:
The glamor wears off quick after you realize that you’re not staying over in London, NYC, Tokyo or any other attractive international destination after one flight there, a long layover, then one flight back. You’re junior so you don’t have a planned flight schedule for the month, on call for 4,5,6 days in a row, you’ve been assigned a couple day-trips necessitating trips to the airport early in the AM and not getting done until late at night, then get assigned a multi-day 12+ leg trip that has you overnighting in Pittsburgh, Midland Texas, and Raleigh NC. You’re exhausted, got reassigned thanks to weather delays, now you’ve got a Fresno overnight instead of Pittsburgh, all the passengers have been a PITA because it’s your fault the airline can’t control the weather. No food because of the delays and you’ve been running from flight to flight and you have been subsisting on diet coke and pretzels, tired because the overnights have been whittled down to minimum rest, and when you finally get to your two days off you have to commute home, feed the cat, do laundry, sleep in your own bed for one night and then commute back to base to be ready for your next on-call stretch. (many crew don’t “live” in base, you can’t afford to live in a NYC airline base on $27k a year, they get a crashpad, usually shared with multiple roomates to defray the cost of a place you just need to hang out at for the night before a trip you can’t fly in for same-day or wait for a on-call assignment).
So a LOT of flight attendants don’t survive the first few years when they realize that you need to be at the airline for probably 25+ years before you might approach the “glamor” side, the pay sucks, being on-call (reserve) for years and years… You can actually make decent money if you tough it out, but it;s a long road. People like the image, but it’s a really steep price to finally make it to good.
Thank you. I was just wondering why the hell anyone would work for AA to begin with. This helps explain some of the draw.
I work for the railroad and it’s a very similar story. The way we treat people in the transportation industry is unsustainable and frankly quite dangerous. Having to be on call six days a week with no guarantee if you even are going to be home on the seventh really makes you feel like a second class citizen. At one point in time these types of jobs were appealing because the pay and benefits more than made up for the abusive work schedule but now you are lucky if your pay increases even cover the cost of inflation. I’m sure the airline unions have the same issues the railroad unions have where benifits get widdled away as those with seniority sell out the new hires for deals that only benefit those already employed. Our unions have been doing that for such a long period of time it’s almost unfathomable to hear what benifits we used to have.