Jen is a junior flight attendant at LAX. She flies reserve and has little say over her schedule, awaiting a phone call on duty days to find out where she is flying. But when she noticed her colleague Mona was offering up her Los Angeles – Sydney – Los Angeles trip in a password-protected crew chat forum, she jumped at the opportunity and DMed her.
The post said, “3-day SYD trip available from LAX, departing Friday. I love cookies. DM me if interested.” Mona wrote back saying that she would gladly transfer the trip to Jen, but Jen would need to Zelle her $200. Jen was thrilled to fly to Sydney and bank so many flight hours and Mona was happy to stay home and watch her granddaughter.
United Airlines is firing senior flight attendants accused of turning desirable international trips into a private side hustle. The union is fighting back, but if employees knowingly sold trips in violation of company policy, termination should hardly come as a surprise…and arguably should be applauded.
United Airlines Fires Senior Flight Attendants Accused Of Selling Coveted Trips
United Airlines has reportedly terminated a growing number of senior flight attendants accused of bidding for desirable trips they never intended to work, then selling those assignments to more junior colleagues.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents United cabin crews, says it has seen a “significant increase” in members being fired over alleged trip-trading violations during the last several months.
As first flagged by Paddle Your Own Kanoo, the alleged scheme involves senior flight attendants using their bidding priority to secure coveted international routes or desirable days off, then transferring those trips to junior flight attendants in exchange for money or other compensation.
This practice is often called “trip parking.”
How Selling Flight Attendant Trips Works
Flight attendant schedules at United are heavily governed by seniority. Employees submit their preferences each month, and those with the most seniority generally have first access to the most desirable schedules.
For many flight attendants, that means longhaul trips to cities like Paris, Rome, Tokyo, or Sydney rather than a string of short domestic segments (some love domestic same-day turns as well, like going from Los Angeles to Chicago and back).
Longhaul flying can also be more efficient. A flight attendant trying to accumulate a certain number of monthly hours may prefer a handful of lengthy international trips over many shorter flights with repeated boarding, deplaning, and airport sits.
United allows flight attendants to trade trips after schedules are awarded. That flexibility is valuable and necessary in a workforce of about 30,000 members. People have appointments, family obligations, and emergencies that can arise unexpectedly.
The problem arises when a senior employee bids for a desirable trip without intending to work it, then demands payment from a junior colleague who could never have obtained that assignment through the regular seniority-based bidding system.
Advertisements for such arrangements may use euphemisms like “cookies,” “hugs,” or “kisses” to indicate that compensation is expected. The junior flight attendant gets a desirable trip and potentially a large block of flight hours. The senior flight attendant gets paid to stay home.
On one level, both participants may consider that a win. But it plainly undermines the seniority system. A trip awarded based on decades of service becomes a private asset that can be resold to the highest bidder, hurting those lower on the scale who are trying to play by the rules.
United Is Firing Flight Attendants, Union Pushes Back
United prohibits selling trips for money, as do American Airlines and Delta Air Lines. Other carriers, including Southwest Airlines, permit the practice or do not expressly prohibit it.
The AFA says it will challenge the recent terminations and seek reinstatement when it believes United has failed to establish wrongdoing.
The union said in a memo:
“We demand a proper investigation, we demand a proper notice of this new reality, we demand a decision be made on fact and not suspicion, and we demand progressive discipline be adhered to when and ONLY IF wrongdoing is truly established.”
That is a reasonable demand as far as due process is concerned.
United should not fire a longtime employee simply because a computer detected that she repeatedly traded desirable trips shortly after receiving them. A suspicious pattern is not necessarily conclusive proof that money changed hands.
But if United has messages, payment records, admissions, or other credible evidence showing that an employee was intentionally acquiring trips to sell them, the union’s indignation is misplaced.
Employees know the rule…it’s part of the collective bargaining agreement, not a personal asset.
Should Selling A Trip Really Cost Someone A 30-Year Career?
I understand why some will view termination as excessive, particularly when the accused flight attendants may have decades of service. Progressive discipline generally makes sense. If someone makes an isolated mistake, a warning or suspension may be more appropriate than immediate dismissal.
But this does not sound like a case of accidentally violating an obscure scheduling rule.
If a flight attendant deliberately built a recurring side business around selling trips, that involves planning, concealment, and repeated violations of a clear policy. At that point, the problem is dishonesty…can this employee be trusted with anything?
United has also dealt with this issue before. In 2019, the airline reportedly developed software to detect suspicious trip-trading patterns, and in 2020 it terminated 28 veteran flight attendants accused of trip parking. One of those employees later sued United, alleging age discrimination.
That history makes it difficult for anyone to claim the prohibition came as a surprise.
Still, United must prove each case individually. The fact that an employee is senior, expensive, and frequently trades away good trips cannot itself establish misconduct. Otherwise, this crackdown risks appearing like a convenient method of removing highly paid employees. There should be proof of money exchanging hands.
Unions defend seniority systems because they provide objective rules and protect employees from favoritism. You cannot insist that the best trips be awarded based on seniority, then quietly allow senior employees to monetize that privilege by selling those trips to junior colleagues.
CONCLUSION
United Airlines is reportedly firing an increasing number of senior flight attendants accused of selling desirable international trips to junior colleagues. The union is right to demand evidence, a proper investigation, and fair treatment. No flight attendant should lose a career based only on an algorithm or suspicion.
But if United can prove that employees intentionally bid for coveted trips and sold them for profit, I have little sympathy. Trading trips is a legitimate and important scheduling tool. Turning seniority into a private ticket brokerage is something else entirely. No one should knowingly violate a clear rule, conceal the transaction behind “cookies” and “kisses,” and then act shocked when the airline takes disciplinary action.
What do you think about this issue?
Sara Nelson (head of AFA) is a cancer on the industry. These FA’s should all be fired if it can be proven they traded trips for money. It’s a fireable offense. Some other airlines have different policies. Doesn’t matter. UA policy is clear. You broke it, repeatedly. GTFO
I do not know that United necessarily has a dog in this fight – the flights get covered.
This does however, accentuate the obscene advantages which come from seniority – its a union contract generated side hussle, and it is not necessarily illegal, but it is smarmy. The old hags who enjoy such benefits already get enough. I hope younger, less senior, members join up and stage a coup which allocates the pie more equitably..
I will add, UA perhaps should not care if such a third party trade occurs, but, ironically, the wages it ultimately pay when an old dragon FA wirt senirity foregoes a trip in favor of a less senior FA are actually lower.
Its a bit ironic.
I must add, what level of “proof” should be required here?
It is quite easy to suss out suspicious pattersn even without AI. When such a convincing pattern is substantially established, I would shift any burden of proof from UA to the FA to prove a lack of wrongdoing – placing UA in a position to ferret out private financial transactions without the benefit of discovery is so strict as to make enforcement impossible.
Nor am I so sympathetic to supposed “mistakes” a FA makes. They use coded communications to capitalize on seniority to extract money from their own colleagues. This is not a mistake – it is avarice.
Matt, good on you for letting PYOK, VFTW, and OMAAT run with this first. Quite a vivid opener… “I love cookies.” *facepalm* I agree that these shadow market aren’t victimless side hustles; it’s rent-seeking that mostly exploits junior crew. Of course, as long as this doesn’t lead to un-or-understaffed operations, it doesn’t directly harm the airline, but the corrosive nature of the schemes ultimately do, even if indirect.
That said, outright trading bans are too rigid and harm legitimate emergency flexibility. So, if an airline actually wants to eliminate the shadow market while staying within current CBAs and labor laws, the software just needs blind clearing pools. Like, disable direct-to-employee-ID drops unless it’s a verified, equal-value trip-for-trip swap. Then, unwanted single-sided drops must flow into a central pool awarded by transparent contractual criteria (seniority waves or a first-come queue). Finally, require drops to hit the pool at least 72 hours before check-in to stop last-minute “trip parking.”
No, it will never be ‘perfect,’ and there’ll inevitably be people looking for loopholes in any new system, too, but such improvements would shut down the shadow market without touching union seniority or taking away legitimate flexibility. If anyone has better ideas (no, attacking unions and FAs generally isn’t better), please do tell.
In an ideal world, flight attendants schedule should be based on merit and crew location. Work assignments to Montreal, Brussels and Paris should first go to flight attendants who speak French. Miami (AAL) or Houston (UAL) based flight attendants should have first chance on assignments to South America.
If airlines have evidence that their senior flight attendants selling their assignments for cash, I truly support the airlines to fire those flight attendants.