United’s flight attendants haven’t had a raise in 5 years. But at this point they’re waiting because they rejected a contract that their union negotiated. AFA-CWA said that contract was the best they were going to do.
What ultimately happened is that United and the union had gotten to a place where the airline was spending as much on flight attendants as they were going to. The union had squeezed out all the money. But the union also misjudged the priorities of their flight attendants.
- Flight attendants had been told a new contract would get them more than just boarding pay (pay for time spent boarding the plane, rather than just higher wages meant to account for this) but also time spent waiting for flights in the airport. The union had been promising this, so when they didn’t deliver it was a big blow.
- And flight attendants were concerned about language in the contract that let the airline put them in inferior hotels – properties that are merely ‘tenantable’, though the union argued that they were actually going to get better hotels (and that the union would be involved in picking them).
71% of flight attendants rejected the contract, the union went back to the drawing board surveying its members about what’s most important to them in a contract, and the parties are back at the bargaining table February 10-12.
United has been updating flight attendants with its message directly, not just through the union. Last month they told flight attendants that pay for time spent waiting in the airport was on the table! But the total cost of the contact couldn’t really go up. They were already offering industry-leading pay, benefits and work rules. So they were going to have to offset the cost for this and other priorities that the union was now asking for in a new bite at a contract. And they suggested a couple of things were being negotiated:
- Reducing guaranteed hours for flight attendants working reserve from 78 to 75, and phasing out reserve override.
- Moving to ‘Preferential Bidding System’ (PBS) scheduling, which is more efficient and in use at other major airlines but many flight attendants hate it.
United sent out another message to flight attendants (.pdf) on Friday and it was all about PBS scheduling.
United is trying to reframe the ‘TA2’ conversation around using Preferential Bidding System for scheduling, saying that’s where they say most questions come up. They’re positioning this as “background and education,” not a hard sell, while making a clear case for why they want it in the agreement they’re negotiating.
With PBS flight attendants bid ‘what they want’ (pairings, days off, layovers, start times, aircraft, etc.) and the system awards trips to match preferences as much as possible. It does not create pairings – pairing construction stays the same. It does not eliminate trading, pickup, and drops. Instead, it replaces the line build process.
- Current scheduling: Management builds pre-packaged monthly lines (complete schedules). Flight attendants bid on those lines by seniority. If you win a line, you basically know what your month looks like, then you trade, pick up, and drop around it.
- PBS scheduling: Instead of bidding on a prebuilt line, you bid your preferences (e.g., “avoid early reports,” “want 3–4 day trips,” “prefer Europe layovers,” “want weekends off”). The algorithm awards pairings and days off in a way that tries to satisfy as many preferences as possible subject to rules, staffing needs, and seniority.
United points out that it’s industry-standard and “modern” – American, JetBlue and Delta use it and the AFA union has implemented it with other carriers. United’s pilots have been using it for over 20 years.
They say PBS improves operational predictability and creates savings that can be “directed back” into the flight attendant contract.
And not to worry, it’s not immediate, and will take years to design, test, train and roll out in partnership with the union and with cabin crew input.
Here’s why United wants it:
- match staffing to demand better
- refine schedules more before bid close
- reduce last-minute manual schedule changes
- eliminate the need for a vacation relief bid
- let training be bid as part of the schedule
- which gives them a “more predictable operation” as well as fewer disruptions and reassignments
United gets reduced administrative complexity, fewer manual interventions, and better alignment between staffing and actual flying needs which reduces costs from inefficiencies and reworking schedules. That pays for union asks in a revised contract.
They pitch is as better for flight attendants:
- more influence when preferences don’t fit neatly into pre-built lines
- bid what matters instead of accepting a line with tradeoffs they don’t like
- Potentially better stability if it reduces reworking schedules after awards are made
- And it’s like tools flight attendants already use for vacation relief lines and reserve preferencing
Why flight attendants often don’t like PBS:
- It feels complex and can be intimidating
- It can feel less predictable than line bidding because crew aren’t choosing a fixed package of flights, and because results can vary month to month
- When flight attendants don’t get what they wanted, it feels like the system “chose against them” even if it’s just rules and seniority, versus getting a known specific bundle of flights. PBS can feel like bidding into a fog, especially for mid-seniority flight attendants who get different mixes of trips each month.
- optimal bidding can become a game, with more time in the system, more strategy, and more tinkering.
- people who’ve built childcare and commuting routines around a stable line can see reduced predictability.
But does United even want PBS schedling? Yes, but:
- The union told flight attendants that the original agreement they voted down had as much money in it as possible.
- Flight attendants still voted against it. The union misread priorities. The money wasn’t allocated the way flight attendants overall wanted.
- So there are new demands – but to meet those, within a fixed budget, there needs to be tradeoffs elsewhere in the deal. PBS creats savings that provide “flexibility to address other priorities…without increasing the cost of the overall agreement.”
- Many flight attendants hate PBS. Putting it on the table and making clear it’s the cost of getting wins elsewhere in the contract could let the union beat them on it, take a win back to flight attendants, and help both underscore that (1) any new deal is the best they could have gotten without PBS and (2) look like the union fought for the best deal possible. That helps smooth passage.
United genuinely wants PBS. But it can also be a ratification lever – accept PBS for more money, or we took PBS off the table now vote for the agreement.
Ultimately, United may not be using PBS as a decoy. It’s something they want to get sooner or later, and a new tentative agreement is a time to trade for it. And they’re campaigning for it. But it’s also a strong bargaining chip to trade away to get a deal done.
It’s pretty clear, either you’re with workers and consumers, or you’re for management and shareholders; and, not just in aviation, friends. The irony is some of you still excitedly lick boots, anyway, just for fun, it seems. Yum.
People don’t like change. Many are afraid of it. Almost every airline out there has some sort of PBS scheduling. Flight attendants tend to get spun up over the great unknown and are easily influenced by the Facebook and TikTok loudmouths that in many cases are clueless as well.
PBS has (for once!) been pretty accurately described in an article. Well done. However, there are some additional points that you neglected to bring up as to why the flight attendants oppose its implementation.
The first one is “vacation override”. Vacation is bid and awarded annually. You know what weeks you will have off well ahead of time – say, Sunday thru Saturday the second week of May. Then, when May bidding for schedules begins, you don’t bid for lines that put a trip fully inside your vacation week (like a 4-day trip on Monday-Thursday in the middle). That would have your 7 days of vacation only producing 4 extra days off.
Instead, the currently utilized strategy is to bid for a line with a trip that ends on your first day of vacation and another that begins on the last day. Both trips are dropped (paid) due to the conflict, and now you have at least 13 days free (4 day trip gone – 5 days of vacation – 4 day trip gone) and maybe even more, if there are days off before or after the dropped trips.
Under PBS, lines are not built with conflicting trips that touch vacation days, so there’s no vacation override. Without strong supporting rules, one week of vacation may only result in four extra days of work. That’s a big concession, and that’s what the pilots lived under in their old contract. Now, because of improved rules tied to using PBS in the latest contract, a week of vacation gives 5-6 paid days off instead. Likewise, if PBS were accepted, the flight attendants’ daily vacation day credit could be high enough to ensure they’d get a week off with a week of vacation when PBS produces their schedules.
The flight attendants also have a big misconception about PBS. One of the things nearly every flight attendant does is trade trips after their schedules come out. The ability to easily trade is essential to flying the types of trips they want, and to getting the days off they need. Literally, I don’t think I’ve ever met a single one that does not actively engage in trip trading.
For some reason, they believe that the use of PBS includes limiting (or even eliminating) the ability to trade any trips. As mentioned in the article, PBS is the tool to only PRODUCE schedules. It is a completely different system and process to trade trips after your schedule is awarded, and that would remain unchanged if PBS were implemented.
From my experience (I’ve worked at multiple airlines, using PBS and “Hard Lines”) that PBS is superior. Even when relatively senior (enjoying earlier picking of a hard line) there were some things within the available hard lines I didn’t like. Being pre-built, there might still be 10%-25% I didn’t want in the best lines. However, with PBS – even when my relative seniority was worse – I can craft my requests for schedule construction and regularly get 100% of what I want for each trip.
My belief is that most of the opposition to PBS is opposition to change. Flight attendants that have spent literal decades learning, using, and optimizing the current “Hard Line” system don’t want to learn another. United really wants it because of efficiency – you don’t need to hire as many flight attendants when PBS more efficiently fills out everyone’s schedules, and it represents a significant cost savings as a result.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out, and who blinks first.
@Coffee Please — Have you tried ‘hope’ yet? I hear it goes well with ‘change.’
I”m a flight attendant for AA, 34 years. Our union fought PBS for years – and now that we have it I wonder WHY they fought it. It is far, far superior to line bidding. (Yes, I realize not everybody agrees with me.)
United FAs are scared of the unknown, but I’ll take PBS any day over sorting through hundreds of pre-done lines of trips. It is more efficient (not just for the company) in every single way. Sure, it takes some getting used to, but that’s fast and not difficult. It used to take me – literally – 6 to 10 hours to bid every month. With PBS it can literally take 2 minutes if I use a standing bid – where I simply tell PBS what I want to fly. And you can still bid for days off, specific trips, specific positions on the plane, specific aircraft, certain layover cities (and ones to avoid), and on and on if you want. That takes me about an hour IF I’m being very specific.
They are shooting themselves in the foot for not accepting it in return for more pay. We did for decades – and that was foolish.
@An Actual AA Flight Attendant — Speaking of AAL, how’r things going over there after the ‘meltdown’ (sleeping in airports without any support from management) and lack of meaninful profit-sharing (potential ‘vote of no confidence’ in Isom, which apparently, the pilots did not proceed with…)?
@1990
Some of us really know what is going on. You only “Hope” you knew.
I’m a United loyalist and fly them all the time. They really need to figure this FA thing out because the type of people that are now FAs is not who I enjoy being served by. I wish I could go into specifics, but I’m sure you know what I’m getting at. I’ll just say the stereotypes are that they’re sassy, both the female group and male group.
@1990 Well, because I’ve been around so long I’ve witnessed AA going through A LOT. From (for example) our strike in 1993 to repeated and heated contract negotiations to 9/11 to the ‘shoe bomber’ to the real estate economic crisis of 1998 to (the chosen) bankruptcy to the (horrible) merger with USAir to COVID to…. this meltdown was just the latest. Worse than some others, but it clearly shows that America West/USAir management is incapable of running a world-class airline.
So how is it going? Things are certainly running more normally, but there is continued angst about AA’s lack of ability to make real money, and immense desire for Isom to be gone. (Why the heck is the BOD allowing him to stay?)
I very much appreciate the pay raise that we got in October of 2024 and hoping that we are able to hang onto it. I have a year and three months to go before I retire, and as much as I enjoy and appreciate my job, I have to say that I will be happy to leave it behind me. And I am one that works hard, treats people well (especially as purser), takes my responsibility seriously – and has honestly never played Candy Crush. : )
@An Actual AA Flight Attendant — I appreciate your perspective, and thank you for taking the time to share it here with us. Wishing you the very best in reaching your retirement.
I’m convinced there’s still ample ‘money on the table,’ and it’s just purposely being kept off those books, siloed in the loyalty program, while the main business, from which profit sharing would come from, is designed to look as if its failing, so as to not share that wealth with those, such as yourself, who actually ‘run’ the airline.
@Coffee Please — Ahh, so you’re the one who ‘knows.’ What’s in that coffee?!
@1990 – I was in Senior management for 30 years and have been an active investor for over 40 years with a very healthy portfolio. Therefore I am definitely for management and shareholders as anyone with a brain and money should be.
BTW your “boot licker” comment is very old and not applicable for someone looking out for their own self interest (which we should all be doing)
I’m an FA with United and I wouldn’t mind PBS at all. My friends at American tell me they have gotten used to it, and that they actually like it. Change is necessary sometimes. If PBS means we can get all the other things we’ve been asking for in our contract, then sign me up! The only problem is, it seems like the AFA is more against PBS than the FA population is. On my trips, FAs are pretty open to the idea, as long as it is well designed and included some type of vacation extension option.
@MattB I’m glad to see that you’re in favor of it. As I said above, I like it MUCH better than the old line bidding. It’s interesting to see that it’s more favored by the FA population than it is with the union. I cannot imagine why the AFA is so against it. One thing that I like about it is, it’s a win-win. Better and more flexible bidding for FAs and more efficient for the company. And ours does include a vacation extension option, so I hope y’all get that too.
(For those unaware, vacation extension is when you are allowed in PBS to block days that ‘attach’ to your actual vacation days from being scheduled to fly. They’re not paid days, but you aren’t forced to fly. It’s a fantastic benefit if you want to extend your vacation. In our case, AA, if you have 7 or more consecutive days of vacation you can request up to four extension days for that block, on either end of the vacation, including (for example) one day before and three days after, or all four prior or after. It’s a great flexibility and they cannot be denied.)
I wish all of you at UA the best of luck with your continued negotiations, and I hope that the AFA relaxes its stance on PBS. Good luck.
In a free society, any employee who voluntarily rejects a compensation package should face the prospect of being fired, and the employer would be able to offer that wage to any other individual.
@An Actual AA Flight Attendant
Just another AA Flight Attendant who thinks they’re working for the most wonderful airline and under the most amazing contract in the industry.
A contract they sold themselves out for. Chasing the dollar signs because y’all only think about money and flying 100+ hours.
And if it’s not that, it’s worrying who is flying the most meager credited trips such as LHR or DUB. God forbid you see a junior on FRA or GRU.
Meanwhile, at 4.5 years, I am flying all the LHR and FRA’s I want – sprinkled in with a DXB, JNB etc… I also just picked up a sweet AKL and PPT recently too (out of base).
Did I forget to tell you how instantaneous it was and have nobody branding me with stupid-ass lingo such as ‘cAArtel’?
I am on my way to becoming a purser too.
Keep living in your fantasy bubble, while your (mostly) junior crews are sleeping on airport floors and y’all have become an embarrassment in this industry.
Stay in your lane and stop worrying about our negotiations and what we should be doing.
Having spent 3.5 years with y’all, I know exactly how it is.
That’s why I encourage my fellow and wonderful family at friendly skies to NOT think about chasing the bottom dollar, while selling out our flexibility and systems in place now.
Flight attendants should be paid more. There is great hazards in their work, such as getting carpal tunnel from browsing on the phone during the flights. I suggest paying them $1M to start. They are after all more important than pilots. These planes fly themselves, they don’t do anything.
The companies have plenty of money, they can just sell off their planes to pay for the FAs if needed. Why do these companies need to be so greedy keeping all those planes anyway? Most of us don’t have any planes, it’s not fair. It’s racist too. Somehow.
Ticket prices might increase, but if you can’t afford to pay $20k to fly to Des Moines, then you just shouldn’t be flying.
@Intheclouds – If you read what I wrote to suggest that I think AA is “the most wonderful airline” or that we are working “under the most amazing contract in the industry” you are sorely mistaken. There is plenty of both to complain about, but this was specifically about PBS (which we’ve had for years before this recent contract) and I don’t focus on all the negatives. I’m happy that I was raised to view the glass as being half full. Unlike angry others.
It seems that you aren’t thinking about the fact that senior FAs were junior for many years too. You’ve undoubtedly heard this before but I’ll say it anyway – I did my share of lousy trips and being on reserve. Which is why I appreciate what I can fly now.
All I intended to say to the other UA FA is that I think PBS is much better than line bidding. I wouldn’t let being against it be a main reason to reject a contract. Offering my opinion about PBS is not getting out of “my lane.”
I wish all of you luck in your negotiations.
Two things, bad management creates unions, and contract settlement is never about what someone deserves, it is about what you can negotiate. That statement applies to both sides. UAL negotiators can make the claim “this is all the money there is” but that is specious at best when at the same time management awards multimillion dollar compensation packages to themselves.
The comments regarding flight attendant resistance to PBS as simply “fear of the unknown” are oversimplified and erroneous. Flight attendants using PBS who write how well it works and are happy with it, are making those comments without knowledge of which version of PBS United is proposing. For example, United pilots PBS is programmed to bias “group satisfaction “ vs straight seniority award criteria. The current flight attendant bidding system awards schedules in seniority order.. In real world application the end result of this version of the PBS program assures no one is completely satisfied except management.
Negotiators and UAL management would not be pushing PBS this hard if it were not a huge net gain for the company which will translate into larger compensation packages for management. Depending on which version of PBS is used, the flight attendants will experience lower quality of life and income potential.
Why would people pay dues to a union that takes going on 6 years to get anything done? When you pay for a service you expect results. Again going on 6 years with no raises, where are the timely results? I would expect if you aren’t getting the service you pay for, you don’t have to pay until the service has been done.
Man who the hell wants a packet of bids? This ain’t 1975. You absolutely need PBS and you can use that as a free bargaining chip. Tell them you will adopt PBS if they give y’all some other thing you actually want. Walking around in these flight attendant streets without PBS, you are cheating yourselves.
As a UA fa, let me add my 2 cents worth to the PBS discussion. In it’s current form, united’s FA PBS is smoke and mirrors. It doesn’t exist! Any PBS is built with parameters and until those parameters are spelled out it will be a hard no for me and a lot of my colleagues. Anyone who works in the airline industry knows that change is inevitable. It’s not change that we fear, it’s the unknown. The company needs to build the program, set the parameters, let the FAs see it, touch it, play with it before trying to it to us. Every airline is able to create a PBS based on its own needs and specifications. If United wants it that badly, show us the finished product…..build it and they will come!
@ Terraplane: “For example, United pilots PBS is programmed to bias “group satisfaction “ vs straight seniority award criteria.”
UA pilot here, and I’ve worked many years with the PBS team. You are 100% wrong.
The UA Pilot PBS system is designed to prioritize and award trips via straight seniority. If your highest desire can produce a legal award, and the trips are available at your seniority, you will get them. As PBS goes through the process of producing schedules (optimizing them, crunching through the literally hundreds of thousands of possible scheduling permutations and solutions, working to get as many pilots as many of their highest desires as possible) it will give a single pilot a better schedule if it means making every single pilot junior to them have a worse schedule. There is no “group satisfaction” within the awarding of individual trips like you claim.
The only group demand – which is codified within the pilot contract, so every pilot lives under the same conditions – is that as a pilot, you get to know (going into the bid month) if you will be a line holder or a reserve. That is the ONLY “group” demand placed on the system, and it has nothing to do with “satisfaction”. The most junior pilot will not get a more “satisfying” trip if it could have been awarded to a senior one instead. What the “line guarantee” demand (“G Line”) does is ensure that a senior pilot cannot force another junior pilot who is entitled to being a lineholder into a reserve schedule if the junior pilot does not want to involuntarily be on reserve.
This desire to know ahead of time if you can avoid reserve does put a simple limit on PBS, as it honors seniority demands – there are situations where an individual pilot cannot have their highest request as entered (“System Constraints”). But, that is usually because the particular pilot made a request, that if honored, would not allow the remaining pilots to have legal schedules. Simply explained, imagine if the first half of the pilots requested their schedules be packed with tons of flying that there was not enough remaining trips to give lines to the last pilots entitled to lines (and not sitting reserve). The system would therefore eventually reject an individual pilot’s request for a high-credit schedule. But that’s not a “satisfaction” constraint. That’s a contractually legal constraint we’ve agreed to (knowing ahead of time you will not be on reserve for the month). There are other legal constraints that must be followed (not too much and not too little unassigned trips be left open, following FAR 117 rest rules, etc.) that are codified within the contract.
Bottom line – the myth that pilots didn’t get their highest award because of “group satisfaction” is tied to the misunderstanding of how the system works – pilots simply cannot ask for contractually or federally illegal schedules, and when they do (and don’t get that schedule) they think it bypassed seniority. It didn’t. The pilot asked for an unreasonable or unawardable schedule. But other than that constraint, PBS gives each pilot, and as many pilots as possible, their highest desired award that their seniority can hold, without regard to how bad it makes pilots below them as it works through the award process.
The UA Flight Attendants have every right to reject or embrace PBS. It’s their decision to make. However, if they are going to “buy” keeping PBS out of their next contract by using their negotiating capital on maintaining Hard Lines – it should be based on facts about how PBS works, and not the myths that keep floating around… like the myth that PBS will not honor seniority and will give a senior bidder a mediocre schedule to improve a junior bidder’s schedule. It’s the exact opposite – PBS will make as many junior bidder’s schedules a little worse to improve a single, senior bidder’s schedule result.