Flight attendants paid during boarding: what if Delta had opened Pandora’s box?

Delta Airlines recently announced that the company will pay its flight attendants during the boarding phase . A decision that risks setting a precedent, to the chagrin of its competitors.

Paying flight attendants during boarding?

If this may surprise many who think that the job of cabin crew is a job that allows you to discover the world without too much effort, know that it does not it is by no means an easy job and that in some ways it is anything but rosy.

So if you didn’t know, the industry norm is that flight attendants aren’t paid while boarding. They are paid “block to block” so from the moment the door of the aircraft is closed until the moment it is reopened at destination.

Why ? Because we have always considered, rightly or wrongly, that it is a phase during which he is passive. I’ll let you think about the relevance of such an approach, we’ll talk about it another time.

But, apparently, everyone got along very well until recently.

Why is Delta paying its staff during boarding?

Delta’s turnaround comes from a very operational consideration: for flights to leave more on time, boarding time must be increased.

An idea that makes sense except for sailors who, you guessed it, take a dim view of the increase in the time they are actually present but not paid because they are supposed to be inactive.

It is in this context that a union, the Association of Flight Attendants, tries to mobilize Delta employees to push them to unionize. It now represents 80% of the employees of American, United and Southwest but is hardly established at Delta, a company which has always succeeded in avoiding the establishment of unions.

It is thus to pull the rug from under the feet of the unions that Delta announced that from June 2 its staff will be paid 50% of the normal hourly rate during the boarding phase even if the union claims paternity. of this progress.

A decision that spreads like oil?

It was enough to set fire to the powder among the competitors.

At United first, where the union in question never succeeded in obtaining what Delta gave to the employees…without a union. Same at Southwest and American.

Now the pressure will be strong on Delta’s competitors to bring the practices into line. Will they follow?

There will certainly be structural trade-offs to be made insofar as the impact on costs will be anything but negligible, especially on medium haul.

A winning move for Delta?

For Delta, the measure will be far from neutral from a financial point of view, but it seems that the price to pay is acceptable in relation to the situation.

Already because it hopes to put a brake on the unionization campaign taking place within it. The message is clear: “you don’t need unions, the companies where they are present have never seen such social progress…”.

Then because the sector suffers from real recruitment problems . Not as helped as European companies (but able to operate a small part of their domestic network while European skies were completely closed), American companies have largely cut back, as usual in the event of a crisis). And, Delta is no exception to the rule, they are failing to recruit enough as traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels.

In this context, everything is good to attract candidates…or prevent its crews from going to see the competition.

But it is still a major change in the economic model of flight, all in an already largely inflationary context. What impact on the ticket price? On the economic performance of the company? It doesn’t take long to be fixed.

And nothing says that unconsciously the employees do not unconsciously associate this decision with the will of a trade union to establish itself, thus energizing the membership campaign… at the antipodes with the objectives pursued.

Conclusion

To counter the attempt to establish a union and become attractive again, Delta will now pay its flight attendants during boarding, a rare case in the sector.

We are now waiting to see if the competition aligns and what the cost of this decision will be, especially if it remains reflected in the price of the ticket.

Image: PNC by ESB Professional via Shutterstock

Bertrand Duperrin
Bertrand Duperrinhttp://www.duperrin.com
Compulsive traveler, present in the French #avgeek community since the late 2000s and passionate about (long) travel since his youth, Bertrand Duperrin co-founded Travel Guys with Olivier Delestre in March 2015.
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