Flight attendants at United Airlines have been selling the benefits of their senior to junior cabin crew, and the airline is cracking down, according to its union.
Cabin crew website Paddle Your Own Kanoo flags that flight attendants union AFA-CWA is telling its members that United Airlines has started firing a larger number of flight attendants for trip-brokering violations.
- During the past several months, AFA has seen a “significant increase” in members terminated for alleged trip-trading misconduct.
- A senior flight attendant bids for a desirable trip, often an international pairing or dates surrounding a holiday, without intending to work it. They transfer that trip to a junior employee in exchange for cash, gifts, or an illicit benefit.
Within the flight attendant community, this kind of trade has long had crude slang attached to it — including a version with “FCO” as shorthand for Rome — because the alleged exchanges are not always just cash or gifts.
- AFA says it intends to challenge the dismissals – “push back on every case” – and seek reinstatement for affected members. Their position is that United is merely inferring guilt from obtaining the best trips and transferring them immediately to junior employees (often on a repeated basis).
I’ve been writing about the practice for nearly a decade. United has been warning flight attendants not to do this dating back to at least 2019. And we’ve seen American Airlines cracking down on this practice for several years.
In fact, at American the flight attendants union helps the airline track down and fire flight attendants who sell trips. In fact, that’s something that even went into the new flight attendant contract two years ago.
Nonetheless, the practice continues. Flight attendants often think they’re being clever, discussing trip sales online but using code like exchanging ‘cookies’ for ‘kisses’. Those messages never go over well when the flight attendant gets hauled in to explain themselves.
Interestingly, Southwest’s flight attendant contract actually permits the practice. There’s even been open discussion in union materials about flight attendants failing to pay for promised trades – “not paying cash posted on trip trades” as an airline culture problem. JetBlue’s agreement doesn’t expressly prohibit the practice, either.
Of course, neither Southwest nor JetBlue has especially desireable trips like Rome, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney!
At some level, an airline shouldn’t care. They’re still paying crew for the trip. They may even be paying lower wages as a result. It creates unhappy employees with higher seniority than those actually working the trip, though.
Mostly it’s an intra-union issue – and the unions usually want to protect their most senior members (who are monetizing the asset, selling the trips) but each union’s politics will vary. Sometimes the union’s most vocal members (voters) are the ones who see themselves losing out from these trades.
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. It’s the natural result of inefficiently allocating what employees want most (specific trips) based on seniority. Here, the company and union are fighting over the symptoms of a broken duty assignment system.
Barter is always inefficient. Hasn’t someone figured out a market-based solution to deliver more value to both high and low seniority employees?
@nsx at FlyerTalk — The collective bargaining agreement at Southwest already allows crew to legally buy and sell shifts. American, Delta, and United currently forbid it.
One word:
Seniority
Southwest allows FA’s to pay someone to take their trip or reserve block. It’s a way for someone who needs to be off to get their work covered without needing to use leave.
It is not permitted to charge someone money to take a trip from you. That’s a very different thing.
Do other airlines do this selling of trips at American Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines too. Could explain a lot of things.
Let the firings begin I say if this is the case.
What’s the market price for a great route?
Firing senior crew who do this is better for everyone – including Junior crew – who don’t do this. Junior crew get natural access to better trips, airline gets to ditch flight attendants drawing seniority wages who are no better at meeting FAA minimums than junior FAs.
@1990: Allowing legal buying and selling of shifts makes sense DEPENDING how much advantage senior FAs have over junior ones. If they are compensated similar and monetizing seniority bidding is an intended part of the compensation package, great… cost to airline for each employee is similar, let the employees figure out market value of better itineraries.
If you’re just carrying very expensive senior FAs who work little themselves because they’re living off selling their itineraries, that’s bad for everyone but the senior FAs who are being a drain on everyone else.
Just an excuse to get rid of higher paid attendants and replace them with lower paid, newer ones with less seniority.
so the SR FA are the pimps and they are selling out the flights to the Johns?
100% morally Great.
This is one aspect in which I hate unions (though I believe they are genuinely a good thing) compared to sectoral bargaining or labor regulations. The way union elections are structured, future employees don’t get a vote at all. This creates a strong incentive for companies to “buy off” the votes of senior employees by structuring long-duration contracts that give small perks (like better trips) to soon-to-be retiring employees in exchange for screwing over junior employees and future workers. It is analogous to older voters supporting high federal spending to fund programs that disproportionately benefit seniors (i.e. Medicare and military spending to support asset prices of U.S. companies) through debt that future generations must pay back despite receiving little to none of the benefits of the spending.
@Christopher Raehl — Different airlines, different approaches, different contracts; each capable of changing, evolving, and adapting. If something isn’t working at United, they can vote, run for leadership, negotiate a new method. There really isn’t a single ‘best’ way to do this, unless you have the answer, in which case, ‘well, we’re waiting…’
I know some FA’s who had “trip trade services” basically a clearing house for those that wanted to get rid of, pick up or sell trips. They get a cut of course. Now they are gone, the airline has shut them down on multiple fronts. First being the exclusion from using another employee sign in. It is strictly forbidden to give someone your sign in to act as you (like trip trading). Secondly, the selling of trips by senior FA’s to junior FA’s. In the company’s view, the trip doesn’t belong to the bidding crew member until they sign in for the trip. It’s property of the airline and not the awarded FA.
Good luck to AFA trying to defend this. Nah, I hope they fail. Policy deviation isn’t a good look.
What’s the FCO slang term?
@Joe –
Regarding Southwest I beg to differ:
“It is not permitted to charge someone money to take a trip from you. That’s a very different thing.”
I can tell you in my base we have someone very well known (not a secret at all) who has access to all of the senior momma’s boards…. bids all of the good turn lines for them…. and then turns around and gives all of those turns to junior people who pay monthly fees to be in “the group.”
People who have been here for less than 10 years paying to be part of a group so they can get access to the senior momma’s turns?
That is EXACTLY the same thing.
Not hard to isolate the trading footprint of this type of activity in the data. Examples:
1: Senior flight attendant married to a much more junior one. Senior one bids “good” schedule then trades entire schedule with spouse, then just trades out of spouse’s former bad trips as trips open up. Junior spouse gets good trips he/she couldn’t normally hold.
Data would show lots of trades with just one other flight attendant. This would be allowed. No issues.
2: Senior flight attendant does lots of regularly-reoccurring trades out of the same type of trips with numerous other flight attendants – probably hundreds – that are just too many to be close friends.
Data would support the trips are probably being bartered or sold, and would warrant further investigation. So not allowed.
As everything is logged, anyone with a history of selling trips is eventually going to stand out in the data and get caught FAFO.
The problem is that with this sale capability, the senior FA will never retire. they will just continue to waddle between the galley and the sleeping quarters after they help with boarding.
It is the passenger that suffers from this violation. The sooner these people move on to their nursing homes, the sooner first class service will be consistently stocked with younger more ambition and less long term animosity.
What position does the IRS take on these sales?
Has there been a tax evasion case related to this?
@MGHOW — Now you care about funding the IRS to go after tax cheats? Oh, I see, only enforcing tax laws against perceived enemies (unions!), not the super-wealthy or corporations. As is tradition.
@1990 Puzzling. How do you perceive a tax liability attaches to a union for earnings of its members? Is it not usually the person with the income who is taxed on that income? Do you not pay tax?
The income generated by selling trips is taxable. The employees have an obligation to report this income. If this occurs with United understanding, then United might be facilitation tax fraud and might have some responsibility.
I don’t make the rules. Your Congress does. No one is above the law! (except illegals and Democrats apparently)
Fire both the seller and buyer. There are 100 waiting to take their place for every one of them.
I’m just curious: what is a “bad” trip for US flight attendants?
Has UA not learned from FIFA and this year’s World Cup? Set up an official exchange and charge the buyer and seller a hefty premium. I’m not just kidding, there is economic surplus here if no trades take place. I haven’t worked it through, but, anytime you have some with an asset/right worth $X to them and others willing to pay $Y for that asset/right ($Y>$X) we can arrive at a price $P ($Y>$P>$X) that makes both parties better and the entire economy better by $Y-$X.
BTW, there’s an interesting Coasian aspect here.
Not acceptable!All union contracts are based on seniority (last hired, first fired). That’s the whole basis of seniority. By signing a contract, you live by the contract. If the employer has to live by the contract terms, so do the union members.
Selling slots builds rancor and discord among the rank & file when we get into bidding wars and the loser complains to management. Then it hits the fan!!
Selling trips is a big no no but that won’t stop flight attendants from risking their 30 year job to do so.
I assure you with the utmost confidence that any of the senior flight attendants who may have been fired for selling trips will be reinstated with back pay. The union will NOT tolerate members being fired for “cause”. That is the power of a union.
@America first — @MGHOW didn’t take the bait, but you sure did. Thank you, my liege. As to the topics at-hand. Yes, yes…all income, any source (side-hustles, crypto, parlays, and these black market airline shift bartering schemes), worldwide, must be reported to the authorities! *cracks-whip* And, naturally, a rigid one-party-system (under Republicans, of course; not those ‘evil’ demon-rats… right @Michael Mainello?) will be ‘fair and balanced,’ not corrupt or self-dealing at all, and far better than having those pesky elections ever again. *cracks whip again for effect* /s
Obviously the negative comments are all done by clueless men.
How can you even understand the world of Flight Attendants?
People waiting in line for the job?
Experience is everything in the world of flying…
@Gary Leff — (Back to reality) Dr. Gary, you seem to have easily diagnosed the cause here (seniority often creates a secondary market because it misallocates high-value trips). And the rest of us are just bickering over the symptoms. The problem is that every ‘medicine’ creates new ‘side-effects.’ Strict enforcement ruins schedule flexibility for real life and emergencies. A Southwest-style “bounty” market just legitimizes third-party middleman rackets (@WahidA’s point). Setting up a FIFA-style, corporate-run “Coasian” clearinghouse to skim transaction fees (@This comes to mind) would turn company schedules into a ticket-scalping ring that the AFA will never agree to. So, how would you actually reform this? What’s the model that preserves flexibility without turning senior crew into landlords?
1990 is correct…other airlines forbid this action. Buying or selling trips is no different than selling “buddy passes” to family, friends or strangers. Although these swaps are done online, in many cases, a “live” scheduler has to intercede to make sure that the swap is FAR or contract “legal”. I have heard rumors that some United pilots will “game the system” by intentionally refusing (at the last minute) an aircraft for minor discrepancies. This will delay the flight thus gaining themselves more pay at the expense of customer service. While “legal” it is unethical.
FCO = Free Cocaine
For FCO sound out the letters and see what it rhymes with (it’s neither mulva nor delores)
I had wondered where the term “Hostitudes” originated. Thank you for the info.
@ Gary No soup for you!
1. Jetblue flies to Paris.
2. The article doesn’t mention if it is a breach of the contract.
3. American Airlines pilots can trade their trips for cash so why flight attendants couldn’t?
@Sponge Bob — “How many times, old man…” Well done. 1. You caught Gary in an error. He said, “Of course, neither Southwest nor JetBlue has especially desireable (sic, off and a spelling mistake, yikes) trips like Rome, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney!” And yet, for now at least, B6 does fly CDG (that’s Paris, Gary…), LHR, AMS, DUB, and EDI. Got’em!
*3 hours later* …2. the AFA contract includes the right to trade trips for schedule flexibility, but United’s company policies prohibit selling shifts for cash or profit. That’s why supposedly United is firing crew for misconduct, and also why the union is defending them on ‘due process’ grounds rather than claiming cash sales are ‘allowed.’ Finally, 3. pilot contracts are separate from flight attendants contracts. Different companies, different work groups, different unions, different rules. (Why don’t we take another airline’s contract… ‘and push it over here?!’)
Allowing flight attendants to trade trip assignments between themselves (accomplished online thru crew management systems btw) “fixes” personal issues that might otherwise impact company operations (last minute absences that would require shuffling other employees to fill the vacancy). Despite a remunerative labor agreement, however, the ability to monetize one’s seniority beyond the potential of working lucrative assignments is irresistible to some, and troubling to a carrier managing far-flung personnel at home and on assignment.
No matter how “good” a flight attendant’s schedule is, they will resent someone junior who has anything encroaching on what they have.
@ Jon
FCO is the three-letter airport code for Rome, Italy.