you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 148 points 1 year ago (9 children)

wtf?

“We can fly upwards of 15 hours in a day and only get paid for three and a half. Our flight attendants don’t make a living wage,” said Becky Black, a flight attendant for nearly 22 years at PSA Airlines, which operates flights for American Airlines. “We have a flight attendant who lives in a homeless shelter. We have flight attendants that are living in crew rooms. We have flight attendants who are 30 years old and have to move back in with their parents because they can’t afford to live with this job.

  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    That’s wrong. You can be on duty 15 hours a day and only get paid 3.5 hours. She misspoke or the press got it wrong.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Unfortunately this is true (assuming the PSA block minimum is 3.5hrs) At jetblue it's 5 hrs, at spirit it's 4 hrs. Duty can be scheduled between 12-14 hours and extended upwards of 15 for delays.

    Take the example of this fun little overnight trip, you fly one leg to Norfolk, sit on the ground for five hours (six and a half, but half hour deplaning, one hour boarding) then fly back. Your flight time (paid time) is 4hrs33 and your time away from base (time on duty) is 12hrs35

    But dont panic folks, you can be disciplined at any point during duty time for your behavior, where you are, and uniform compliance :,(

    (Edit: blurred some stuff in the pic)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I say the same thing, where "flying" is transit time between places, even if there's a layover. There's a difference being at home and "on duty" as in on-call and ready to go and being stuck in an airport for 10 hours because you're doing a Chicago-LA-Chicago return and stuck in LA because the shitter's broke on the plane you took there and need to get back to O'Hare.

    Seriously, that person is not at home and not able to really have control over their own time because of their job. It's more than being just "on duty" in a sense that they shouldn't be getting paid.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • I didn’t want to get in the weeds for an audience that doesn't need to know the differences between reserves or being stuck at an airport all day on a trip that went bad over weather or maintenance. Yeah, there’s different kinds of duty, but for this argument I’d suggest the latter is far more likely. Long days made worse due to some disruption where you might only get one or two legs done on an RJ.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Probably an ignorant question but if you go to work 15 hours just to go back to the homeless shelter. Why not just skip the middle man, and just not go to work?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment