71% Of United Flight Attendants Rejected Their Contract — Now Algorithm-Assigned Work Schedules Are Back On The Table

United Airlines flight attendants haven’t seen a raise in five years. Their union negotiated a contract which they told crew was the best they’d do. However, many flight attendants didn’t like elements of it – like language around hotels which seemed to allow lower quality lodging farther away from cities – and others simply believed you should ‘never take the first offer’ and that they can always do better. 71% voted against it.

• The value of their wages had eroded about 25%.
  
• The new contract provided average increases of less than 27%.

However, what the union understood was that they were losing negotiating leverage in the Trump administration, which seemed less likely to allow an airline strike (and Biden administration appointees had not allowed airline unions to strike, even), and that to get additional concessions from United the airline would want things in return.

Flight attendants are now shocked to learn that as the union presses for advantages in renegotiation, the airline is putting things they’d agreed to in the earlier tentative contract back on the table for discussion – including how flight attendant schedules are constructed.

United Wants To Use PBS To Schedule Flight Attendants

United’s position – naturally – is that if the union wants to change some elements of the agreement that are more costly to the airline, they’re going to need to offset this in other areas. It’s exactly what I wrote to expect.

Rejecting the contract didn’t automatically mean ‘getting more’. The union surveyed members to better understand what was important to them – in some sense, they got flight attendant priorities wrong in their previous negotiations. They’re pushing for adjustments to how United calls flight attendants to work, and to layover hotel requirements.

“Much of the discussion this week centered on pushing our non-economic improvements, which include changes to hotel language, electronic notification, and other provisions of concern,” the memo added. “We have resolved a number of these issues.”

United – as a bargaining position – wants to schedule more efficiently, in ways they’d previously agreed not to.

United told tens of thousands of flight attendants that it had begun a “joint process with AFA to modernize bidding in a way that gives flight attendants more say in their schedules and more flexibility around what they value most.”

“Incredibly, management came into this week’s negotiations with a list of concessions, all of which we rejected in TA1,” the union said in a memo. “The proposals would reduce the value of the TA. Any illusions that management is sitting there with a better offer in their pocket should be dispelled. “

What PBS Is – And Fly Flight Attendants Hate It

A ‘Preferential Bidding System’ replaces a listing of available trip lines, where the most senior crew picks first, with layered preferences that each crewmember enters:

• Days off, credit range, trip length, report times, aircraft, destinations, commutability, reserve vs lineholder, etc.
  
• Ordered by priority (Layer 1, 2, 3…).
  
• Then the system solves the month, running an optimization engine across all bidders simultaneously.
  
• Seniority matters, but within a constraint-satisfaction framework. It assigns trips that best satisfy higher-priority preferences while meeting coverage, legality, and contractual rules.

The system comes up with a schedule that meets the entered preferences, but not necessarily the trips a flight attendant would have chosen.

PBS is better for an airline’s operational efficiency. There are fewer unassigned trips and better coverage of undesirable flying, and a lot less manual work. It reduces the need for premium pay.

A flight attendant can ask for exactly what they want, with no need to babysit a selection window. It can be better for commuters and parents needing specific days off. But flight attendants often hate it in practice.

Traditionally, if you pick a trip, it’s yours. But with PBS you submit abstract preferences and the computer gives you something that complies. Crewmembers feel it’s opaque and disempowering. PBS is literal. You ask for “no redeyes.” You get a 5:30 a.m. report. The system did what you asked. Just not what you wanted.

Highly senior flight attendants often prefer predictable patterns, with the same trips every month. PBS breaks this. You can lose a specific line because the system spread your preferred trips to satisfy more people. Seniority still matters, but not in the psychologically satisfying way of seeing your dominance. To do well under PBS, you need to understand contract details, anticipate how the solver behaves, and build defensive bids.

Where This Ends Up

There’s a bit of kabuki theater here. United can’t really spend more than they’ve already agreed to, so priorities need to shuffle in ways that make it look like crew gain in the renegotiation. Otherwise the contract won’t pass.

And the airline and union need to work together to make it seem like a win for both of them. United can threaten something that flight attendants hate, then the union can beat it back – and look like they’ve scored a big win just by gaining something in negotiations that they had gained in the previous round.

My own bet is that we do not see PBS bidding at United. I expect that it is a negotiating tactic.

American and Alaska flight attendants use PBS scheduling. I believe Delta pilots do, as well. And United is big on using AI and AI-adjacent technologies for efficiency. But since they already agreed in the last round to forego this, and it’s a hot button for flight attendants, this seems more like something you put on the table in order to take off later and declare a win.