American Airlines flight attendants ratified a new contract Thursday, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) said, ending a contentious negotiation process and securing long sought-after compensation for time spent boarding planes.
By Kelsey Ables
American’s CEO Robert Isom said both sides worked to deliver “an agreement our flight attendants have earned.” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg congratulated the flight attendants in a post on social media, writing that the contract will “benefit the whole aviation sector.”
Here’s what to know.
What’s in the contract
The contract covers about 28,000 American Airlines flight attendants. It also includes wage increases of up to 20.5 percent, retroactive pay for time spent negotiating it as well as additional provisions to compensate flight attendants for long waits between flights, the APFA said. Wage increases go into effect Oct. 1, the release said.
The agreement also “addresses many quality-of-life issues, and improves scheduling, rescheduling, and reserve work rules,” it said.
A long process
While flight attendants’ lives have long been glamorized, in reality, many face financial struggles and income inequality that parallel other global industries that rely on blue-collar workers, The Washington Post reported.
More than 160 U.S. lawmakers in May urged the National Mediation Board to help some 80,000 flight attendants at airlines including American reach new contract deals. In June, American Airlines attendants threatened to strike, with APFA saying in a statement that it disagreed with the company on “key economics of the deal plus the company’s completely unacceptable demand for scheduling concessions.”
After years of tense negotiations, American and the union announced that they had reached a tentative agreement in July, gaining the attention of President Joe Biden.
Boarding pay
In the United States, flight attendants are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act since their job is essential to the economy. Many flight attendants are paid only when the airplane’s doors are shut, which has sparked calls for change across the industry — though some airlines push back against this framing, saying boarding time is accounted for in certain pay mechanisms.
In the past 15 years or so, the issue has become increasingly important to flight attendants as their duties “increased dramatically,” said Henry Harteveldt, a San Francisco-based airline industry analyst, with airlines adding more seats to planes and more passengers bringing carry-on luggage.
“The boarding of a flight is very busy,” Harteveldt added. Flight attendants are doing everything from helping people find their seat “to making sure that the cabin is in order, checking galleys, checking safety equipment and so on,” he said, calling the American Airlines contract “a big win that cannot be underestimated.”
In 2022, Delta became the first major U.S. airline to offer half pay during boarding. Though Harteveldt and unions say this was an attempt to stave off unionization, it put pressure on other airlines to consider similar changes.
United Airlines flight attendants this month authorized a strike should management not agree to their demands, which include pay for time spent during the boarding process. Ken Jacobs, co-chair of UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, said in an email that “key issues in those negotiations include pay while on the ground and unpaid overtime.”
“This is likely to be a major bargaining issue across the remaining airlines in the coming years,” he said.
