A flight attendant for American Airlines shares with Business Insider that some of her colleagues earn up to $150,000/year thanks to picking up overtime. How much money do flight attendants make?
Flight Attendant Pay – Up To $150,000/Year In USA?
The 36-year-old flight attendant chose to remain anonymous, but has worked for American Airlines for six years and offers candid insight into how much senior flight attendants who put in extra work can make:
I make about $5,000 a month if I work 18 days that month. If you’re doing some overtime, you’re looking at about $7,000 a month. There are some flight attendants, we call them “senior mamas,” who work 150 to 200 hours a month at up to $69 per hour. To me, that’s absurd, but they’re pulling in about $150,000 a year.
Unlike pilots, which are limited to 100 hours per month of flying, flight attendants can put in far more hours.
Bids for routes, all determined by seniority, are put in around the 12th-15th of the month and the following month’s schedule is released around the 18th. Thus, senior flight attendants can secure more lucrative longhaul routes, which provide plenty of hours and are relatively easier than working domestic shorthaul.
For example, what do you think is easier? Working one flight from Los Angeles to Sydney (15 hours) or seven round-trips between Los Angeles and San Francisco? Seniority allows flight attendants to “hold lines” which is why (in my experience certainly) you often see the same flight attendants on the same routes.
U.S. flight attendants are generally paid more handsomely than their colleagues in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, or South America. Legacy airlines like America, Alaska, Delta, and United pay best, with the most senior flight attendants earning six-figure salaries even before potential overtime. Budget carriers are able to offer lower fares by paying flight attendants less. For example, a senior Frontier Airlines flight attendants earns roughly half of what a United flight attendant earns.
In Europe, flight attendants for Scandinavian Airlines are purportedly paid highest, though still less than their U.S. counterparts, with senior flight attendants for major flag carriers like Air France, British Airways, KLM, and Lufthansa earning less.
One thing I’ve noticed in my years of travel: the idea that flight attendants are uneducated “trolley dollies” is simply wrong. Totally wrong. I’ve gotten to know many flight attendants who are highly-educated and serve as flight attendants for the thrill of traveling the world and for flight benefits. Think nurses. Lawyers. CPAs. For many, it’s an exciting side gig or second career.
You’re also more statically likely to get into Harvard than become a flight attendant in the USA.
> Read More: Admission to Harvard is Easier than Becoming a Delta FA
CONCLUSION
Flight attendants are paid well in the United States and there is potential for significant additional earnings through picking up overtime. It is no wonder that becoming a flight attendant is one of the most highly-selective jobs in the world.
Yes my friend who is an FA for United picked the career due to six figure income potential after about 5 to 7 years of seniority. Southwest FAs do even better. I have seen some stories of them making 250k in a year.
Acura, I think it would be unduly optimistic for your friend to think he or she has the potential to make that much with 5-7 years. It wouldn’t theoretically be impossible, but in a real world situation, it likely would be.
It’s realistic for those who fly high time only. But there are plenty of people flying high time and making bank. But yes for the average FA it’s not realistic but for some it is. Southwest FAs share their amazing pay stories in some Facebook groups that I am in which are very fascinating. Company basically throws money at them during certain periods. Even United is giving an attendance bonus point if they don’t call out for a certain period during Halloween.
I’m topped out in pay and I make about $65,000 a year. I find once I fly more than about 80 flight hours a month, I do a terrible job and feel horrible all the time so I like to fly less and do a good job. Quality of life and health are more important to me than money these days, but not everyone has the financial resources to make that choice. Also, I used to be international and make in the low $100,000s in half the work days; now I’m domestic. Certainly, I don’t enjoy flying with those who do fly 120-200 hours a month. They’re invariably surly and sit around on the jumpseat watching movies or playing video games because they’re too exhausted to do their job properly.
As for the uneducated part, I don’t think I’ve ever met a FA without at minimum a 4 year college degree and masters degrees are not uncommon. Of course, the quality of our educational institutions is not what it once was so we may still be poorly educated. I also know of lawyers, a dentist, scores of CPAs, teachers and college professors, and many with a Ph.D.
This is interesting insight. However….many of us work 80 hours A WEEK – but we actually love our jobs – so I don’t buy the exhausted bit at a 100 hours A MONTH detracting from quality of life and creating exhaustion. They play video games in the galley because they are older, bored, protected by unions and seniority, and just don’t care. And, in the end, more importantly, really don’t like their jobs.
Stuart, you probably know this but when FAs say they work 80 hours, that’s referring to time in the air. Think about how long a FA has to actually work or be away from home for a 1-hour flight between LAX and SFO. Doing that round trip once likely takes 12 hours of a FA’s day but only counts for 2-3 hours of “work” as it is discussed here.
80 hours a month, I need to quit working for tech startups!
Andy, You do realize I mean the same? You think I, or others, count everything? I have not had a weekend off in two months. And been on the road for the most part of it. But I’m as happy as can be!
Well, I’m older and planning to retire before too much longer so I don’t have the stamina I did in my early days. I find on most domestic trips, I do get paid a bit less than half the hours I work. So I tend to work about 3 days a week; that’s 3 12-14 hour workdays for which I’m paid for about 15-18 hours and doesn’t include time spent on layovers. Also, switching back and forth between nights and days gets a little wearing. But as I said, I’ve been around a while and no longer interested in killing myself with overwork. And I do like my job, but my feet and body still ache with too much flying, regardless of whether I like my job or not. I do tend to think I’m overpaid for what I do, but don’t tell my employer.
I’m a flight attendant. I work 13 hour days, twenty days a month but I’m only paid for about 89 hours a month(more than most flight attendants). You have no idea what you’re talking about.
I can see that as possible especially if you work overtime. I have friends who are nurses and cops and they all can make 6 figures mainly bc of working overtime.
I am pretty shocked to read these amounts, they are positively astronomical compared to what is being paid in Europe. BA are notorious for paying their cabin crew low salaries, but they aren’t even the lowest-paying UK airline. In my previous job, I was on an interview panel for a generic customer service role, and one of the applicants was a Flybe FA on a full-time salary of £19k (that only was Feb last year- so not affected by a long period of inflation), which is barely higher than the minimum wage. [Flybe are now defunct, of course, but there are other small airlines that probably don’t pay much more]
Things are even worse in other European countries- I highly doubt Aegean FAs net more than €1k a month.
I’m a pilot and I fly 76 seat aircraft for a regional airline that also flies under the guise of being American Airlines. You all should research what a regional airline actually is, they do about 50% of the flights in the USA. You think you’re on a mainline carrier, but you’re not. And we are not well compensated or well rested either. Things are better than they were about 10 years ago, but they still have a long way to go.
I’m lucky if I break 60k per year at this job. That’s after 4 years of college, 2 years of flight training, and 2 more years working as a flight instructor making about 30k per year. My education cost about 150k. My pay should go up soon, but not enough to justify the expense, sacrifice, scrutiny of our personal lives, and dedication to flight training. Every 6 months we have to attend recurrent training… This is basically like re-interviewing for our job.. If we have a bad day, or a prick instructor, we get fired. There are also no lateral moves in this business. If you go to a different company, you start at the very bottom of that company seniority list, and you start at year one pay. There is no negotiating for a higher salary.. It’s all predetermined by contract. I’m beginning to think I should have been a city bus driver, or a flight attendant.
The senior mamas exemplifies why the big 3 U.S. airlines are rated the worst in the world for flight attendant service. Everyone who is being honest admits that some work is perfectly fine for 70 year olds like accounting, engineering, and medicine but walking down aisles hundreds of times a flight, responding to call buttons, serving drinks/food, securing the cabin, and etc. is not one of them.
In the rest of the world, being a flight attendant is for young healthy people who are enthusiastic about doing a good job, having fun with their friends, and looking forward to the destination they wind up in. These lifers in the U.S. drag service down, their personalities are out of joint, they don’t have fun, and have no reason to do a good job. They get by on the minimum.
@Paycucked is right. The regional pilots are underpaid. We don’t want pilots in a commercial airline struggle financially. That’s unsafe. The same applies to some flight attendants. They are underpaid yet these senior mamas and others who abuse overtime and union rules that allow them to do no work get more than is fair. Unions (delta isn’t union but the existence of other unions has the same effect) don’t help the best and most deserving workers. They help the worst and everyone else pays, including the good workers, passengers, and shareholders,
Nothing really to do with the topic (which I don’t feel qualified to comment on, other than to say that like all other employees in any industry, if they can make that much, more power to ’em–the management maggots are out to screw us out of every nickel they can get and We the People have a patriotic duty to return the favor with a vengeance!).
My gripe: why use the photo of a bimbo in a Halloween (to be charitable) or Adult Novelty Shop fetish costume instead of a real flight attendant in a real uniform?
As a girly cartoonist it would be ridiculous for me to be outraged by the sexism, but I like my cartoons to be accurate in the details and it’s a personal bugaboo of mine that when I go out Googling one airline or another’s flight attendant uniforms of a certain period I get maybe one real picture in every hundred like the crap used to illustrate this article. It’s insulting not only to flight attendants but to History.
As a former senior mama who flew until 73, I can see both sides. I flew low hours (50) the last few years, so I had time to take trips on my own and also be good on the flights. I received at least one Orchid (complimentary) letter per month plus verbal compliments and business cards with notes. I received 2 Onion letters in my 45 year career (dealing with baggage). I have a BS degree, but it is the life style and travel that are the draws in the job. Those who were lazy as senior mamas were most likely that way early on and just got more so.
As a former senior mama who flew until 73, I can see both sides. I flew low hours (50) the last few years, so I had time to take trips on my own and also be good on the flights. I received at least one Orchid (complimentary) letter per month plus verbal compliments and business cards with notes. I received 2 Onion letters in my 45 year career (dealing with baggage). I have a BS degree, but it is the life style and travel that are the draws in the job. Those who were lazy as senior mamas were most likely that way early on and just got more so.
This is the first time I have ever responded to something on line.
I work for a legacy carrier, and I can make over $100K if I fly high time trips. I’m pretty senior in NYC, so I bid all international trips. For example: A 2 day Athens pay 20 hours, and a 4 day Delhi trip pays 32. If I work back to back trips. That pays 52 hours for a 6 day. If I decide to work more, I can easily get over 100 hours a month, but those trips are pretty exhausting.