Tag Archives for flight attendants.
A flight attendant has her job back, and nearly $1 million, after Southwest Airlines and her union worked together to fire her over her union and religious politics.
A Florida hotel is suing Southwest Airlines after a flight attendant on layover allegedly tampered with a sprinkler in her room, setting off flooding that spread through guest rooms and common areas. What makes it interesting is suing the employer, which has the deeper pockets but a more tenuous case for liability.
American Airlines has started issuing performance grades to flight attendants, using a mix of customer survey data, operational metrics, and internal compliance measures to score how they are doing. That is a meaningful shift for an airline that badly needs better onboard service, but unless those scores eventually lead to real rewards for top performers and real consequences for chronic underperformance, it will not come close to fixing the deeper problem.
China Southern fired a veteran flight attendant after she posted lingerie selfies from a delayed flight before passengers boarded, turning a brief WeChat post into a years-long court fight over image, discipline, and how far airlines can go in policing crew behavior. What began as a seemingly easy termination became much messier once judges started asking whether the airline’s rules were clear, proportionate, and even in force at the time.
United flight attendants are finally getting a raise after more than five years without one, and this tentative deal will likely pass after last summer’s overwhelming rejection. But the new agreement also shows the cost of delay: compared to the deal they turned down, each crewmember is effectively giving up thousands in retro pay and lost boarding pay gains while just getting back to industry-standard wages overall.
United’s new tentative agreement really does deliver what the union is selling on the headline items: roughly 30% higher base pay, 50% boarding pay, a richer 401(k) match, and meaningfully better hotel language. But after reading all 425 pages, the fuller story is that the gains come with real tradeoffs too — profit sharing still trails Delta and American, the retro pay is not truly full retro, and the union gave up the restriction that had blocked United from owning a regional airline without using mainline flight attendants.
Senior United flight attendants are on track to earn more than $100 an hour under the union’s newly endorsed contract — and the pay rates leaked online before most crew have even seen the full agreement. The union’s leadership voted unanimously to send the deal to members, but the biggest remaining question is what United got in return for the richer wages, boarding pay, retroactive pay, and better layover hotel protections.
Air India will begin weighing flight attendants under a new health and fitness policy starting May 1, with overweight crew removed from duty and, in some cases, taken off payroll until they clear medical review. The airline says the BMI-based crackdown is about safety and fitness, but it also comes in the middle of a broader effort to remake Air India’s image with new uniforms, stricter standards, and a very public brand reset.
American Airlines flight attendants are privately voicing fears of a future bankruptcy, according to previously unreported union meeting minutes that describe the carrier’s finances as “dire.” The real concern is not that Chapter 11 is imminent, but that years of weak profitability and strategic mistakes have left the airline vulnerable if conditions get worse.
Air Canada flight attendants are objecting as the airline upgrades seats and service on Rouge, its lower-cost leisure subsidiary, arguing that the product is getting too close to mainline. It is really about scope, job protection, and how far an airline can improve a lower-cost brand before it starts threatening higher-paid work.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
