Historically, flight attendants
have wrongfully been perceived (mostly by people who aren’t familiar with the workings of the aviation industry) as mere “sky waiters/waitresses”. In light of such perception, it was also believed that salaries of flight attendants were the result of mere good looks and little work.
Photo: Qantas
Though this perception has changed over the past decades, the issues behind the average earnings of flight attendants aren’t as widely discussed as flight attendants would have wanted.
Julie Hedrick, the president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) and a flight attendant for American Airlines, was even quoted in View From The Wing as having said: “We have a lot of time in our days that we are unpaid.”
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But why exactly is this the case? A comparison of the pay scales of flight attendants to pilots has also revealed that flight attendants are paid considerably less. There is much more to the hourly pay that flight attendants receive than a mere bright-looking statistic, such as the 
American Airlines
‘ (AA) flight attendants earning $30 to $68 per hour.
Salaries: Pilots vs flight attendants
Simple Flying reported
that the average salary of a pilot in the US in 2023 was around $200,000 per year. Here are the numbers behind how much pilots are paid:
Photo: Lufthansa
Regional Airlines pay around $60 -$150 per hour for the pilots. The lower end of this hourly pay is twice as good as the hourly pay of AA’s flight attendants. Patricia Green, a journalist for Simple Flying, and someone who holds a GCAA Cabin Crew License
reported that the salary of a cabin crew is ‘quite’ low
in comparison to a ‘normal job’.
Here’s a breakdown of the salary of flight attendants on some airlines:
Some work that flight attendants do but don’t get paid for
It might come as a surprise to people who don’t know the aviation industry closely that flight attendants only get paid once the aircraft door closes. Julie Hedrick reflected on the amount of time flight attendants don’t get paid:
“That unpaid time — which might be five or six hours a day — includes all the hours flight attendants spend in airports, waiting for their next flight, as well as all the time it takes to get people and their bags on board and in their proper places.”
Photo: Emirates
What this means is that flight attendants don’t get paid for “all the job ‘on the job’ at the airport“. When Ellen Church took to the skies as the first flight attendant, she wanted to calm the fear of passengers. With time, the role of a flight attendant has evolved to save the lives of passengers.
However, despite the evolution of their role, Forbes reported that flight attendants in recent times have had to deal with some unruly circumstances that weren’t a part of flights in the years gone by:
“Hours in the air have increased, layover time decreased, and largely salaries have stayed relatively stagnant. Would you be happy flying six short haul sectors in a day? Screaming children, multiple rude passengers, and an employer that puts shareholders over employees.”
Are airlines bending the rules with regional airlines?
It is common knowledge that major airlines such as American Airlines
operate a few regional carriers under their brand. Forbes even suggested that this way of operating allowed carriers to break up the power possessed by unions of flight attendants, thereby enforcing:
“different and progressively weaker employee contracts by fragmenting their workforce into multiple different airlines. This also largely allows the airline to abstain from responsibility, often turning round and blaming isolated incidents on a rogue regional operator.”
Even The Washington Post reported that flight attendants at big three
airlines in the US earned far more than the crew working at regional airlines. One might argue that the union could go on a strike, but securing the rights for a strike isn’t as easy. Without permission from the federal government, airline workers can’t even go on strike.
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Are flight attendants really not paid for boarding?
In 2022, One Mile At a Time reported about the petition that a lot of flight attendants had signed in regard to securing the right to get paid for boarding as well. Boarding is regarded as one of the more difficult aspects of the work of a flight attendant:
” They are paid what is deemed as “hourly rate,” which is below minimum wage. Until the door is closed and the brakes are lifted flight attendants are paid on average $2.00/hour. Even though they are required by their company and the FAA to be there and perform crucial job-related safety and customer service duties. Airlines are taking more and more of Flight Attendants’ time. In the past decade, boarding has gone from 30, to 35, to 40 minutes. These decisions were made by management and no flight attendants were consulted during this decision-making process. “
But npr.org reported that Alaska Airlines felt that the reality was different from the narratives we generally hear as the airline pays “flight attendants for boarding time through a pay mechanism that was negotiated with the union in previous contract cycles.“
Photo: Feruzbek | Shutterstock
Sara Nelson, president of the union (Association of Flight Attendants) that represents flight attendants at 
Alaska Airlines
, 
United Airlines
, and a few other carriers confided to npr.org that the pay mechanism was a “guarantee of one hour of paid flight time for every two hours on duty.”
Some airlines are resorting to paying flight attendants more. These include:
- Delta Air Lines (since 2022) started paying its flight attendants “at half their hourly rate for a set 40 to 50 minutes of boarding“.
- APFA is arguing for a rise in flight attendants’ pay by 33%.
- American Airlines is eyeing raising flight attendant’s pay by 11%.
Photo: Lufthansa Group
Flight attendants do indeed have additional perks such as the following:
- Commission on sales
- Per diem allowances
- Reduced-price tickets
- Insurance
However, observers of the aviation industry feel that there’s a strong need to raise the salaries of flight attendants.