Dozens of flight attendants across several airlines have blown the whistle on low wages and dire living situations as unions attempt to get them better pay, the Washington Post revealed Monday.
Beth, who works for Delta Air Lines, relies on a flight attendant “crash pad” that she shares with a rotating array of other employees for $325-450 per month, depending on how often she sleeps there.
The “flimsy” furniture and dirty conditions made the apartment look like “a cross between a budget Airbnb and a hostel,” the Post’s Natalie B. Compton said.
Beth stays with five other women and two men in the crash pad part of the month so she can commute to the hub city where she’s technically based out of — while still keeping her rent-controlled $1,800 apartment in another state to be with her father who has cancer.
“No one cleans the place. I got bites from what looks like bedbugs,” she told the publication. “They stack us in there like sardines to make the most money.”
Other flight attendants live in their cars, skip meals, and use YMCAs and gyms to shower.
Kay, a newer Frontier Airlines employee, has to drive for Lyft, deliver for Instacart, and pet sit to make ends meet after undergoing nearly a month of unpaid training for her new career.
Her projected income as a first-year flight attendant is $23,000 — before taxes and insurance.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that the 2023 median pay for flight attendants was $68,370, but first-year flight attendants make much less.
According to the country’s largest flight attendant union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA), first-years make about $23,000 at Frontier, $25,000 at Alaska, $27,000 at American and $32,000 at Delta Air Lines.
An “employment verification” letter from American Airlines to a flight attendant confirmed that their projected year-one pay would add up to a bit over $27,000 at $30.35 per flight hour — because they do not get as much or at all during the boarding process.
Rich Henderson, a flight attendant of over 10 years, told the Post that “it’s pretty common to work six hours of flight time… but you’re actually working for 12 to 14 hours.”
“We have a lot of time at work we don’t get paid,” he added.
This payment structure is legal because aviation workers are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act due to their careers being considered “essential to the economy,” Compton noted.
AFA president Sara Nelson told the Post that unpaid boarding is “something that we’re fighting to end.”
A May report from AFA revealed shocking statistics about Alaska flight attendants in poverty:
In the past year, nine percent of Alaska Flight Attendants reported experiencing homelessness, living out of their cars, living in a shelter, or some combination of these circumstances. Over 10 percent reported living with their parents/families because they cannot afford rent. 43 percent responded that they must live with multiple roommates. 29 percent of Flight Attendants indicated they live over 100 miles from their base airport because they cannot afford to live near their base.
“As a passenger, you don’t really see those things,” Alaska flight attendant Rebecca Owens told the Post. “You see the smiling, happy flight attendants that are doing anything to survive but still bringing their best selves to work. It’s a lot to really comprehend.”
“This is a problem across the country,” Nelson said. “The basic standard and social contract that if you work full-time, you can get a living wage, health care, retirement and actually have time to spend with your families — that has been eroded in the airline industry the same as it’s been eroded everywhere else.”
Multiple flight attendants told the Post that they make less than what they would working comparable hours at a fast-food restaurant, even though they have massive safety responsibilities for everyone on board the plane.
“I have to supplement my income. But then I’m also not sleeping,” said Kay. “We’re expected to save people on the plane … and we’re not getting paid a living wage.”
The Frontier employee only spoke under the condition of using a nickname she uses outside of work out of fear of retaliation from the company.
According to Julie Hedrick, a 42-year veteran of the industry and the president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), “it’s the same story across probably every single airline right now.”
Beth, who also only spoke under the condition of being identified by a name she does not use at work, said “Being a flight attendant is great if you get up to 12 years and beyond…But when you first start out, you’re just barely surviving.”
Nas Lewis, another flight attendant with over a decade of experience, runs a nonprofit mental health organization called th|AIR|apy to help other flight attendants after experiencing suicidal thoughts due to poverty.
“You have rent, you have car payments, you have children, you have to feed yourself, you have to get to work,” she told the Post. “I was struggling to the point where I was dealing with suicidal ideations and started to drink a lot just to tune everything out and have a moment of escape.”
After undergoing therapy and sharing her inner thoughts with other flight attendants, she realized that many of her colleagues were also suffering.
Thresia Raynor is another longtime flight attendant who decided to openly talk with her peers about their wages and living situations — and found that some of them have to eat leftover food from traveler’s in-flight meals to survive.
Raynor, who has spent 16 years with Alaska Airlines, created a group on Facebook called “Alaska Airlines FA’s experiencing hunger and homelessness” in September 2023.
“People would come to work and hide the fact that they didn’t have anything to eat, or even a dollar to pay the crew van when they got to their layover,” she told the Post. “I wanted to remove the shame so that we could all openly talk about it … and be able to help each other.”
She now arranges “mobile food pantries to help feed flight attendants in Anchorage,” the outlet reported.
Members of her group have pulled together to help other flight attendants escape domestic abuse situations, cover the costs of essentials like children’s car seats, and buy meals at airports.
“A beautiful side of our work group is [flight attendants] will give even what they don’t have … to take care of each other, which is pretty inspiring, but it’s also really sad,” said Owens, who helped Raynor launch the Facebook group.
Martinez, another Alaska flight attendant of 16 years, became a single mother of two after adopting her niece with special needs and nephew out of foster care.
Despite Beth’s assumption that flight attendants with over 12 years on the job are having it “great,” Martinez had to send her nine-year-old girl to live with her parents and has had to sleep with her teenage boy in her car to make ends meet.
“If I didn’t have my parents, I don’t know what I would do,” Martinez, who spoke under the condition of only using her last name, said.
Even though she has the seniority to work on more flights, she said “if I want to actually see my kids and participate in their life, I can’t work past 80 [flight hours].”
“Even then, that’s pushing it,” she added, noting that she worked 144 flight hours to bring home $4,653.80 last December but was gone “the entire month” and “did not see my kids in person.”
“Like all employees who work on a non-salaried basis, how much a flight attendant makes in a year depends largely on how much they work,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement obtained by the Post. “It’s important to note that our flight attendants have significant control over their workload because there is no contractual minimum (or maximum) of required work.”
A Delta spokesperson told the outlet that the airline’s philosophy is to “care for our people through industry-leading pay and programs that provide emergency savings support, financial literacy, and holistic wellness.”
Airlines for America, a trade group that represents major airlines, said in a statement that the airline workforce is “the backbone of the industry and our greatest asset.”
“U.S. passenger and cargo airlines employ more than 800,000 workers — the largest workforce in more than 20 years — who are earning the highest wages and most generous benefits in the history of our industry,” the trade group told the Post, without specifically naming flight attendants.
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