American Airlines flight attendants are selling their seniority again. The company is cracking down on them for it, and the union isn’t protecting the cabin crew.
Flight attendants get to ‘bid’ on trips based on seniority, choosing their schedules which are most convenient to them and which take them to the best destinations. That’s a perk that has real value. Want to fly to Rome? You’d better be super-senior… or be willing to pay someone who is to trade their trip with you.
Crew offer up their trips to more junior crew in exchange for cash ($200 on average) or… other favors.
Now the airline has sent out a memo threatening cabin crew who sell their trips.
Trips are assigned by the company and are not personal property. They cannot be bought, sold or brokered. You may not offer or accept money or other items of value – directly or through coded language – to broker, buy, sell or trade trips with other flight attendants. When someone tries to inappropriately profit by picking up a trip or through selling or trading, it violates the intent and integrity of our bidding systems and our standards of business conduct.
The group of trip traders known as ‘the Cartel’ was already busted. That was a closed group. However, flight attendants apparently post their offers to trade trips in American’s message board thinking they’re clever by speaking in code.. offering up “cookies” in exchange for “hugs,” “kisses,” and “thanks.”
As Matthew Levine often says, “If you must insider trade, and you must do it by buying short-dated out-of-the-money call options in a merger target, at least don’t text or e-mail about it. Come on.” Definitely don’t e-mail your co-conspirators reminding them not to e-mail about doing the crime!
The new American Airlines flight attendants contract contains language about the union helping the airline track down and discipline members who sell their seniority. That’s part of the agreement that the union negotiated. (The airline and union had even come to an agreement before contract negotiations were over on how to handle flight attendants who sell their seniority.)
- American wanted sole discretion in determining who was engaging in this activity
- The union agreed to help put a stop to it as long as they got shared say in the standards that were used.
In fact it’s actually pretty obvious when this is happening when ultra junior cabin crew get to regularly pick up Delhi, Paris and Rio. The union is effectively throwing these members under the bus. The union hasn’t taken the traditional position that their members own their schedules and can do what they want with them.
Ultimately with assigning schedules based on seniority, employees are getting something of value – which may be valued more by someone else. Naturally a secondary market develops, and both parties benefit from the exchange.
The problems stem from inefficiently allocating what employees want most based on seniority, and then cowing to the envy of less senior flight attendants who feel like they’re being skipped over. So the company and union are fighting the symptoms of a broken duty assignment system.
your analysis isn’t completely correct. most trips on the trade board having $ involved just incentivizing people to pick up your trip from the trade board. Most are Not selling high seniority trips to juniors. . Most are junior folks paying anyone to work for them
You have to be an old hag to work the best flights on American!
They already have the oldest cabin crew of any airline… give the kids a break for once… union seniority led to this problem…
This is a very lucrative (and tax free) hustle for senior flight attendants. They will just get more creative in how they communicate trips for sale.
The airline needs to make it that these seniors are not the same ones on the same trips every time. We were on a BOS-LHR flight and there was one FA who could be two of the FA grandmother. And she has the body to prove that she would never act fast in an emergency.
I am sure the IRS would love to see this unreported income
Aw and here I thought there was a wholesome exchange of cookies and hugs going around.
Southwest FAs can sell/buy trips…I don’t seen what the big deal is. As long as that vacancy is covered who cares about money changing hands.
It would be better if seniority was based on customer service scores…
UK: Awesome idea! I love it.
Slow news day Gary?. This has been going on for a long time and is nothing new..What they want to do is go after the “cAArtel” – good luck with that.
The other fun deal with the reserve system or trade board system is when the old hag usually on the sequence doesn’t show up from a broken hip or whatever and the other old hags ask “hOw’D YoU gEt tHiS tRiP?”
Geee I don’t know Carol, maybe Beatrice’s gout flared up or maybe I let the air out of her tires at the 55+ community in Euless.
Instead of seniority, create a true market system: Desirable trips pay less because so many FAs want to do them. The bad trips pay more so that someone willing to work harder for more money choose them. With today’s AI models this is easy to implement.
I guess I don’t see what American’s problem is with trading. Their interest is to be sure each flight is adequately staffed, and that the staffing doesn’t cost them additional for OT or the like. And I assume each FA is adequately trained on each type of aircraft, and meets the standards for documentation of the arrival country.
So, why does AA care at all?
So seniority means getting cool destinations like Paris and London. That’s why those flights usually have FAs who are tired and bitter like an old teacher who hates her students.
I do not see how this hurts the airline. Senior employees get cash, junior employees get adventure. Happy employees make good workers.
I’m not sure I understand why AA mgt cares? If think their primary concern is the flights are fully staffed with FA’s trained for the specific aircraft. What am I missing?
I don’t agree to selling your flight. If the senior FA that “won” that flight cannot “work” that flight then the flight goes to the next FA who bid on that flight.
There are almost as many opinions on this practice as there are flight attendants in the sky. Truth is, as mentioned by another, the overwhelming majority of FA’s don’t sell their trips. Most are trying to incentivize
others to work trips they are unable to drop because the system used for dropping trips is also linked directly to seniority. Junior FA’s have trouble dropping trips because the system only allows a limited number of FA’s to drop a trip.
Anyone with less than 20 years seniority who is assigned a trip on a needed day off is often stuck between a rock and a hard place. You either offer money or call out sick and are issued attendance points which over time add up to disciplinary action.
With that said, there are FA’s who belong to trip trade groups on 3rd party apps, like WhatsApp, that exclude anyone with under 30 years of seniority. These FA’s will only trade long haul, high dollar trips among themselves and exclude others. This may be why on long haul flights it is rare to see anyone with less than 30 years of experience. There is a general lack of transparency with this practice but there are a lot of opinions on this practice too.
You and American both are reporting this wrong. Seniors aren’t daring to sell trips. That would get them in quick trouble with the union. They are however paying money for people to take their shifts because they don’t wanna work. That doesn’t abuse seniority, and really doesn’t harm anyone at all. Not sure why American cares
This is why unions suck – once they discover their true enemy isn’t management, but the common enemy of management and the unions is the customer, the customer gets screwed – it’s just a matter of how the money gets divided between the two.
Just one more of numerous unending “hustles” brought into AA by the USAir FA mob than runs Philly.
Eric,
Even though Gary is wrong about so many things, he isn’t reporting this wrong. At most airlines, FAs are known to pay some other FA to take their trips (or reserve blocks) when they need or want the time off. Companies are USUALLY okay with this.
At American, senior FAs are actually bidding highly desirable trips with layovers in international cities, that they have no intention of flying. They then sell these great trips to junior FAs who want to go there, but are nowhere senior enough to get those troops by themselves. That’s what American is trying to stamp out, apparently with support of the FA union.
Where Gary is wrong here is that it’s NOT a “broken duty assignment system.” It’s just the way it works, honed over decades of airline experience, and it’s the way EVERY airline scheduling system works for FAs and pilots. It’s based on seniority, with crewmembers EXPECTING better schedules as they get more and more senior.
Many, if not most, airline crew unions have some say in schedule creation, and this is the way they want it. Senior get a better deal than juniors.
If Gary REALLy thought there was a better way, he could make millions selling it to all the airlines.
Spoiler alert: he doesn’t.
And therein lies the problem with unions, irrespective of the industry.
Meritocracy rules!
Own experience only, I’ve noticed some older FA to be less enthusiastic on flights than their younger counterparts.
I’m laughing at some if these comments. Comments from those sitting in their parents basements trolling and eating cheetos and drinking mountain dew Those trollswho have never worked a hard days work in their lives. I guess I’m one of those “old hag” flight attendants. Can’t wait to have the trolls on one of my flights.
Go after the people selling their schedules rather than the poor schmucks doing the buying.
I once offered cookies for kisses. Got arrested. Turns out she was an undercover cop.
The FA crypt keepers are all in Business Class on any International flight I am on out of DFW. Bitter, pax haters and could care less about their company. They are just doing their time, they are 100 years old. It’s awful.