United Flight Attendants Offered $20 To Sleep In The Airport Or Hotel Lobbies

United Airlines will pay flight attendants not to take a hotel room for the night during layovers on their trips. This is called the “Hotel Gainsharing” program, and pays “at least $20 per night based on how much United saves in canceling a hotel room that it no longer requires.”

  • They might see friends and family during an overnight stay
  • Or “take a trip during their layover that will necessitate them spending the night away from their crew hotel,” which is common when traveling abroad and the stay is more than just one night
  • They could also share a room with another crewmember
  • But they can pick up this extra money regardless of where they’d spend the night – crashing on a couch with a friend, crashing on a couch in a hotel lobby, or even at the airport.

This saves the company money and shares that savings with the crewmember. However once the flight attendant selects the program for a trip, they can’t back out of it. If their plans change they’re on the hook for where to stay (again, a hotel lobby or the airport!).

The hotel they’re giving up may not be so great to begin with. A year ago the United Airlines flight attendants union advised crewmembers to pack flashlights and latex gloves in order to inspect for bed bugs when they check into airline-provided hotel rooms.

  • So they could check the mattress for bed bug remains
  • Which means looking at the corner of the mattress, seams, and labels
  • And while the headboard is a place bed bugs can be found, crew were warned not to actually remove the headboard because they could be liable for damage.

Flight attendants were also advised to use hard sided luggage rather than fabric, because those surfaces are harder for bedbugs to attach to, and to keep luggage off of floors, beds, and couches. The best place for luggage is on a luggage rack… or bathtub.

Of course, at rival American Airlines, the crew accommodation system was so broken that a few years ago pilots were sleeping in hotel lobbies and not by choice, and flight attendants were sleeping at the airport. At United it’s only supposed to happen voluntarily, and crew get paid.

About Gary Leff

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 »

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Comments

  1. I think the most likely approach would be that crew would start sharing rooms to get the benefit of the savings. However, I don’t think $20 will result in many participants.
    At around $50, there would likely be a lot of younger FAs that would just at the chance to increase their income by room sharing.

  2. You;re such an idiot Gary… we do.not get offers $20 to sleep in hotel lobbies. The stupidity of your article is amazing.

  3. My god…who wants to travel on an airline where the crew shows up without proper rest, hygiene or even looking like crew. And these are the same crews which the airline makes such a big deal about “timing out” for “passenger safety reasons? I’m in the hotel business. I do not know of any hotel contracts that provide rates of <$80/night in most cities. If crew is that desperate for cash that they need to sleep in a lobby and forgo rest and a shower to earn $20, they need to find another job. The genius at UA needs to be fired. And the union leadership should be too. No. Just no

  4. I can guarantee this will not fly if it’s even true. Ridiculous. As far as bed bugs, you can find those even in the most expensive hotels in the World. It just takes the guest before you to drag one in from their suitcase.

  5. The hai sharing program is for two reasons only –

    1. If you commute to base and have a layover in your home city. You go home and not the hotel. Collect the 20 bucks.

    2. Staying with a friend/family.
    You go there. Collect the 20 bucks.

    Saying FAs are sleeping in lobbies or airports is so massively misleading and plainly false as to put the credibility of this entire website into serious question.

  6. @Gary… I’m here mostly for the entertainment value of watching the inane debates between the various political mobs but your headline this really goes beyond what you have ever done before in order to get clicks.
    You can’t be THAT desperate can you?

  7. The hotels which the legacy major US and Western European airlines use for flight crew members coming off intercontinental long-haul flights to foreign continents for them are generally the same kind of hotels I stay at on most of my one-night trips — not lousy but sufficiently ok+ that I repeat use of them.

    But the domestic hotels for some of these airlines or their contract carriers? Some of those have been places I would rather avoid, but others are ok enough — such as the Hyatt Regency Ohare.

  8. I was in a hotel earlier this week where the cheap rooms go for $600+ per night and while I was in the lobby I noticed a dog come in with a guy in a uniform of sort. The dog was there for a bed bug hunting expedition after a couple of guests had reported bed bugs and shown what were probably indicative bite marks to the hotel staff along with pictures of something.

  9. Hey, Scott, instead of paying 200-300/night for your hotel in Reno- you can sleep in my garage for free. It’s even partially heated and is larger than your hotel room but you would have to sleep between cars. No gasoline vapors either as they are electric.
    Put the savings into the FAs health and welfare fund.

  10. Then they have to pay for their own way back to the airport lol no one is falling for that. Worked at a hotel with crew they are always given an airport shuttle ride and if the van is broken we uber them at no cost.

  11. I don’t believe this story for one second. First off, it is in the Union contracts that all airlines must and will have a hotel for every crew member, even if there is a secondary hotel, if that hotel is sold out. This story is FAKE and should not be taken serious. DO NOT believe everything you read. No airline out there has the right to do this to their crew members.

  12. This is Gary taking it to one possible extreme to get clicks. He knows better but doesn’t act it.

    Other airlines have done this for years…. even Spirit pays $50 a night if you don’t take the room. Many flight attendants who are friends buddy bid and share rooms, planned in advance, to take advantage. Or they have layovers where they actually live (a LOT of crews do this) so they get paid to sleep at home. Or have family there.

    This isn’t encouraging sleeping in the airport or hotel lobbies. Get a life.

  13. Wow. You just really are desperate for readers who will believe anything, right?
    What United is offering is a little bit of compensation to someone who cancels their contractual layover hotel room. This also saves the company money. Maybe it’s a crew member who is working a trip to their hometown and will be staying with family. Or a city where a friend lives and will be staying with the friend. Or sometimes couples fly together and they only need one room.

    It’s not to sleep in the lobby. Come on. Do better.

  14. Dude. This has to be your worst article ever. You are not qualified to be a journalist. You are dishonest.

  15. Aren’t there some US flight attendants who have been on the dole with proverbial food stamps assistance (or the like) in the last year or two? If so, you can pretty much bet on there being some flight attendants feeling desperate enough to sleep at the airport or hotel lobbies in exchange for maybe as little as $20 per day — maybe not many, but even a tiny fraction of one-percent can be a notable number when the total number of flight attendants eligible for such an offer is large.

  16. I have been flying for decades and a lot of male flight attendants will sleep in the same hotel room between flights. This is a good way for at least one of them to a few bucks.

  17. The lack of integrity the author of this piece displays is mind blowing. These programs exist at other airlines, and have been for years. As an airline crew member, I find this piece insulting and disrespectful.

  18. Well, Gary suckered me into this clickbait crap. The FAA would never allow crew members, cabin or flight deck, to fly without PROPER REST. But…he gets the prize for stirring up mud in an otherwise clear pond.

  19. Writing an entire article with a title authoritatively touting an imagined, highly unlikely scenario? Should be a fiction writer, or perhaps write for a political campaign about immigrant and pets.

  20. This is all Gary’s clickbait crap, this is why I hardly ever click on the junk Gary writes. If it is a real story either Matt or Lucky will cover it. Those of you that skipped it read @NedsKid comment, that is accurate.

  21. $20.00?
    That doesn’t even buy a sandwich at an airport? Ridiculous and disrespectful and insulting to staff!

  22. Sounds like something the CEO Scott Kirby would approve. He is probably the most diabolical human alive and gets off from seeing his employer suffer like that. Meanwhile he went from 9million-18 million a year. Yet flight attendants are living in carts in between their trips.

  23. The flight attendants and the pilots should go on strike. The airlines make all this money and they treat their employees like cattle. I will not be flying United anymore.

  24. At Archer Riff-Davies
    The male flight attendants sharing a room really isn’t about the money. And before anyone calls me out as homophobic please know that I am a gay man and would love to share the room with my hot male colleagues.

  25. 35 year UA Flight Attendant here. What a ridiculous thing to write about!
    Flight Attendants do NOT “sleep in the lobby” for a measly $20. They may, however release their room if they plan to visit friends or family on a layover. This has historically been done at times as a courtesy to the airline. The $20 is now only offered as an incentive to do so.
    Fix your stupid headline. It’s insulting to crew members.

  26. I work at another airline and have been able to get layovers where I can go home instead. While I have the option of releasing the room, there is no incentive so why bother? The $20 incentive would have saved the company thousands over the years. I suggested a credit system redeemable for future accommodation on a space available basis, but nothing came of it.

  27. I didnt even bother reading your article as you literally are a dumbass. No one voluntarilies sleeps in a hotel lobby for $20. How on earth would you even think that’s possible?

    Clueless moron. @gary

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