Comments

1. “Liiike a glove!” — Ace Ventura

2. You’ve got to “hand” to to United.

3. United flight attendants are obviously not there for your safety when they won’t clean up possibly infectious blood at your seat and instead of using their training for such situations, have an untrained person, the passenger, do it instead. There for your safety my foot.

4. This UA flight attendant is obviously one of the many overworked, underpaid critical safety workers I keep hearing about. Throwing money at their union will surely fix the problem of unskilled labor with 2 weeks of training not performing up to expectations.

   I would say maybe they should take a flight on an Asian carrier as part of their training, but then they’d probably infect the Asian FAs with their shitty attitude.

5. There’s always more to the story… The flight attendant might had told the customer that they would call the cleaners back to the plane, but then the guy might have suggested he’d do it himself because he didn’t want to cause a delay. It’s a window seat, so maybe the flight attendant couldn’t reach, and got called away to address something immediate, and the FA had to say that they’d be back, but the guy got frustrated and accepted the gloves himself. There are many many possibilities, and we’ll only know the one with the intended shock factor. One thing I do know, is that there aren’t enough FAs on any American carrier, including United, America, or Delta. So I’m sure some type of hurried interaction took place. I really doubt the real intent of the interaction was for the customer to clean it. The flight attendant would usually call back the cabin cleaners, and neither the FA or the customer would actually clean it.

6. In any public place, you’re bound to be seated in and around blood and body fluids. On the NYC metro yesterday, I was sitting in a sit that had both blood and excrement on it. No one batted an eye. I would have welcomed some wipes, gloves, and a trash bag, though. The guy who was affected by this situation might not have addressed this correctly with the crew….. He might have asked if they had anything to clean up his seat, and in turn… received wipes, gloves and a bag. If he had spoken up and said, ‘Excuse me, will you clean my seat, I can’t sit here!” then his outcome would be different…..

7. Sick of hearing about the woes of a Flight Attendant they took the job. It is the Airlines responsibility to clean up a plane not the customer. United Airlines is like in a race to be the bottom of the barrel of the large airlines. I would of desired to tell that attendant to F themselves but then you get thrown off. The best bet is simply not to give United any business under any circumstances. From beating customers dragging people off, cleaning up blood to terrible food they utterly suck.

8. More clickbait, out of context hearsay. Forbes published a real news story that counters some of the nonsense on this and other sites’ regarding another UA AFA subject.

   As United Flight Attendants Vote, A.I. And Blog Falsehoods Intrude

   ByTed Reed, Senior Contributor. Charlotte-based reporter Ted Reed covers airlines and airline labor.

   Jul 08, 2025 at 09:45am EDTJul 08, 2025 at 11:09am EDT

   United Airlines flight attendants began voting Monday on a tentative contract agreement that raises average salaries about 27%, improves the grievance procedure, and offers boarding pay for the first time, but social media and some internet postings make the deal sound unfavorable.

   “What’s been very disheartening in this ratification has been the onset of A.I. and Chat GPT and the explosion of blogs that just report things that A.I. is incorrectly reporting and do not check with the union for accuracy,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents about 50,000 flight attendants including 29,000 at United. Voting ends July 29.

   “There have been posts that are entirely wrong,” Nelson said, citing posts on hotel policy, which has in fact improved; union strategy in talks, which has been misinterpreted; airline surveillance of flight attendant texts, which has never been considered and others. “These blogs have perpetuated misinformation, making it difficult for flight attendants to make an informed decision,” she said.

   “A.I. spits out whatever you want,” Nelson said. “You ask a question, ‘What’s wrong with the United contract?’ and it will look for all of the bad comments anyone has made. It has no ability to have a human filter of the nuances.” Often, the false posts on the blogs are picked up by A.I.

   “Typically you don’t see a lot of reporting by news outlets during the course of a vote, unless there is something newsworthy to report,” Nelson said. But in covering the airline industry, newspapers – with their patterns of coverage and their standards for reporting — have largely been replaced by bloggers and influencers with different patterns and standards.

   Ken Diaz, president of the United AFA chapter, said he has discussed the tentative agreement in meetings at seven United hubs as well as in several virtual meetings, some with as many as 5,000 flight attendants. (Diaz arrived at the Guam base on Monday after 25 hours of flying.) “There is so much misinformation from bloggers, but once we have the conversation and clarify, people understand it is not factual,” he said.

   “Some bloggers say we made many concessions,” Diaz said. “But we didn’t give up any of our work rules. In fact, we made many improvements.” On June 10, June the blog “Live and Let’s Fly” posted a story entitled “6 Clauses That Could Derail United’s New Flight Attendant Contract. It listed five undesirable contract changes that it said were in the contract.

   On June 12, after AFA reached out, the blog added notes in red print in which the union responded “false” or “entirely false” to each of the clauses. In an update, the blog said “The info in my original story was shared by a reliable inside source” and asked “What motive, beyond sabotage, would someone have in deliberately sharing such detailed false information?”

   As an example, one of the erroneously cited changes was that “‘Tech-based monitoring’ via apps and cameras may be used for surveillance and discipline without union approval.” AFA called that one “entirely false.”

   Nelson said that contractual hotel policy is among the areas where posting “has been significantly incorrect.” The twitter account “JonNYC” posted in June that hotels for flight attendants had been downgraded, and the blog “One Mile At a Time” rewrote the post under the headline “United Flight Attendants May Soon Stay At Worse Layover Hotels.” However, “there is significantly improved hotel language,” Nelson said. “It requires the company to involve the union in the entire procurement process, with a clear set of requirements for hotels in the contract that enforces the hotel quality we have always experienced and gives us more teeth. So it’s Hilton, Weston, Marriott quality.”

   The contract now ensures that flight attendants with layovers over 17 hours or more go to a downtown hotel. It was previously 19 hours. AFA also protected the requirement that quicker turnarounds are housed closer to the airport. JonNYC did not respond to a twitter message.

   In “View From the Wing,” veteran airline blogger Gary Leff wrote that flight attendants unhappy with the contract were claiming that union leaders were getting a pay raise. Leff said Tuesday he expects to clarify the post after discussion with AFA. (Diaz said it is not true that leaders are getting pay raises under the contract, noting “That would be illegal.”)

   Leff has written about pros and cons of the contract and the union strategy. He wrote that “the union made a strategic blunder in slow-walking contract negotiations, letting American Airlines go first” but also noted that “Many concerns with the tentative agreement are misreadings.”

   Leff said Tuesday, “It seemed like a reasonable strategy to have American go first,” especially with Biden as president. However, AFA “seemingly lost leverage with the change in administrations,” he said.

   “Given the current environment, though, AFA’s judgment that this is the best top line they can do is likely correct – and so the question to cabin crew is whether it reflects the right priorities in allocating those dollars,” Leff said.

   Nelson said United flight attendants did not wait for the completion of American flight attendant talks before negotiating. “We weren’t waiting for anything,” she said. Rather, after the pandemic, most airline unions had open contracts to negotiate. “What’s significant about this round is that it really was pattern bargaining, all of the flight attendants with common demands, on the heels of the same thing happening with pilots,” she said. The United contract is “one step above all the contracts that were negotiated” earlier,” including Alaska, American and Southwest, and has some benefits that non-union Delta lacks, she said.

9. Forbes didn’t publish that, Ted Reed self-published to their blogging platform.

   And Sara Nelson is being disingenuous “Nelson said United flight attendants did not wait for the completion of American flight attendant talks before negotiating. ” That is true, they did not wait to start negotiations. But they lent their lead negotiator to American’s union, to get American to lock in their contract (and potentially endure a strike to do it) first.

   And calling the hotel language in the contract a significant improvement just isn’t true, since it allows properties that are merely ‘tenantable’. That’s the language!

10. Woah, @JL, shots fired! Don’t worry, @Gary Leff, we’re still with ya, buddy! Post whatever you want. Thank you for letting us debate it out in the comments, too!

11. pub·lish /ˈpəbliSH/verb – make (content) available online.

    And here I thought your expertise was in “the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel.’ Should you add labor law, the Railway Labor Act and unions to the list? “The “lead negotiator”? Union contracts are negotiated with teams of people including the labor rep negotiators, lawyers, finance, PR, etc. across from company teams and the UA AFA negotiation has been in mediation under the supervision of the National Mediation Board who has a lot to say about the negotiation schedule along with the company team. You seem to pretend that 1. You know what is going on, and 2. UA AFA controls the schedule. I know #2 is completely incorrect and I seriously doubt #1. I also recognize a serious anti-union bias when I see it.

    In my opinion your site is excellent with regards to your stated areas of expertise, but other subject areas are rife with bias and blatant misinformation which I would imagine generates lots of clicks.

12. Us carriers suck. I only fly asian or euro carriers now.

13. Going on about AI and falsehoods… but is the picture of the passenger left to clean the blood off his seat AI? All these weird excuses too. The subway is grosser – yeah, look at the difference in ticket prices. He probably didn’t ask in the right way – thats the worst take I’ve seen. That’s blood. There shouldn’t be some coded requirement behind basic service requests. A clean and safe environment is considered basic service.
    A huge part of this site’s traffic is made up of the craziest ex-airline personnel. That much is clear.

14. @Gary – Joe Biden did not bump a passenger out of their seat. I even find it extraordinarily unlikely that he asked to do so. So according to you he what – walked up the the counter and said “Hi, I’m a former President. Can you remove someone from first class so I can take their seat away?” The secret service, on the other hand, may have done it but that’s not on him.

    As to the Russian suicide, he did it all wrong. Normally they throw themselves backwards out a window.

15. Blood or not, those seats are layered with germs, ie bacteria, viruses, and whatever else. Nobody cleans them. Bring your disinfectant wipes and always use them.

16. I had an incident on United where there was some sort of projectile on the front of my seat. I kindly asked the flight attendant for an antibacterial wipe so I could clean it off and she insisted on cleaning it herself. Kindness goes a long way when asking for help. Mind you, they are sitting in jump seats the entire flight and serving us as well. Have a heart to these hard working people.