Why Flight Attendants' Pay Is Not What You'd Think It Is

Jetting around to secret destinations for vacations, giving passengers code names, wearing a spiffy uniform — being a flight attendant might seem like a dream job. While for many it is, there are some things about this exciting career that are less than stellar. Unfortunately, that can include the pay. Believe it or not, there are a lot of hours where flight attendants are doing things that they have to do and being places that they have to be for work, yet they are only making a fraction of their actual wage. In some cases, they are working without getting paid at all.

To find out when flight attendants actually get paid, Islands spoke to journalist and veteran international flight attendant Barbi. Barbi shared with us that flight attendants in the U.S. usually don't get paid during boarding or when waiting for flights. When there are major delays, there is no guarantee that they're getting compensated for their time. Additionally, while crew members do get paid a little during layovers, they often end up losing money between flights anyway.

Delayed boarding is a lot more annoying for flight attendants than passengers for one simple reason: They have to work, and they often don't even get paid for it. If you happen to be flying Delta, you can rest assured that, since 2022, the flight attendants are compensated while checking you in and greeting you as you make your way onto the plane. Unfortunately, that's not the case everywhere. While there can be a minimum guaranteed pay (which is different depending on the airline), it still tends to add up to a lot of unpaid or only partially compensated work hours.

Although this is something which flight attendant unions are pushing back on more and more, and it is a contentious topic in contract negotiations, Barbi confirmed that, in general, this is still a major problem for many flight attendants on major U.S. airlines. "For the most part, it's industry-wide and has been this way since before I began flying in 1986."

Barbi told us that how much flight attendants make during flight delays depends on a lot of different circumstances. "Things such as how long was the delay, did you time out and another crew took your scheduled flight to its intended destination. Did that flight make a full turn around, e.g. did the original scheduled flight also return. These are just a few of the considerations that determine our compensation, regardless of whether we're sitting on said plane at the terminal."

While not getting paid during boarding may be the most famously egregious example, there are a few more unexpected situations in which flight attendants aren't necessarily making much money. One that Barbi shared with us has the nickname "Airport Appreciation," and it refers to layovers spent stuck inside air terminals. Often, flight crews aren't paid anything at all while they're waiting for the second leg of their journey. Though flight attendants don't have to walk around on "crotch watch" or collect trash during layovers, they still have to sit around waiting for the next flight, which isn't exactly free time, either.

In some cases, flight attendants may get a small allowance to cover their expenses on layovers, but Barbi explained that it isn't really enough. "It's only a few dollars per hour," she stated. "When you consider that a [majority] of crews layover in big, expensive cities like London, LA, San Francisco, Boston, Paris, Rome, Milan, Tokyo, that paltry two or three dollars per hour at the hotel doesn't go far."