Examiner.Com has a story about Delta wanting to hire an additional 1000 flight attendants starting in June 2011.  There are quite a few things that I think people ought to be ware in this story.  For instance, Delta has already received over 85,000 applications for these jobs.  For every one opening, 85 people are available to fill it. It’s a highly competitive field for jobs even in the best of times.

Flight attendant with 12 years of seniority at Delta who flies about 75 flight hours* a month earns roughly $41,000 a year.  In other words, a college graduate who wins this job can expect to earn that after 12 years of rather hard work.  These days, we don’t treat teachers that rough.

Want the better advantage in winning this job?  Then speaking Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Dutch or Spanish will help a lot.   With the exception of Spanish, those aren’t language skills that are common or easy to acquire. 

In addition to that, only the candidates who are exceptionally personable, conscientious, and physically able are going to even get past a first group interview. 

While it’s more possible to hold some kind of line at Delta with junior seniority, there are some airlines where flight attendants fly reserve** for a decade or more before being able to hold a line***.   That means a decade of working the unknown every month. 

And that $41,000 per year is income that has to go towards paying for the expenses involved with working a job that requires one to be away overnight regularly and a job which does not supply even a meal despite being captured in the air sometimes for more than 12 hours per day.  So you get to earn that $41,000 / year after 12 years while your hungry and without snapping at pushy customers.

In the base salary, at most airlines anyway, you get to pay union dues.  Those dues pay for someone to represent you with the company in contract negotiations that involve your compensation for the future.  Contract negotiations that can go on for as much as 4 years but which average at least 2 years before a resolution is reached and voted on. 

Yes, people actually want these jobs.  Lots of people want them.  Yes, you get flight benefits but those flight benefits are traveling for free on space available basis.  Let me point out that load factors on aircraft are at historically high numbers.  In other words, the chances of getting to use that flight benefit are less than ever before.  It’s a benefit that has marginal value at best these days.

Yes, any job you choose should be done right and done cheerfully.  It is the job.  But before we cast stones, let’s remember just what comes with this job and be a bit more tolerant of those servicing us when we fly.

*  Flight hours aren’t how many hours flight crew work.  Flight hours are the hours you work (and get paid for) essentially from the time the door closes on an aircraft to the time it opens again.  A crew member who works 8 flight hours in a day may end up working a “real” 12+ hours in a day. 

** Flying reserve means that you are to make yourself available to fly a flight to replace another crew member with little notice.  Some forms of reserve require you to sit at the airport wait to be told where you are going with as little as 30 minutes notice.  Other forms require you to be at home, near a phone to take a flight with as little as 2 hours notice.

*** Holding a line means that a flight attendant gets to bid for a certain group of flights and have some knowledge of what they’ll be working for a month.  This changes from month to month and the best “groups” of flights are held by the most senior flight attendants.  It can take 25 or more years to be able to fly the best “groups” of flights. 

Filed under: Airline Service by ajax