Flight attendants are grinding through low wages and crazy schedules, but some are outsmarting the system to wipe out massive debts. The key is to focus on productivity–skipping fancy layovers and turning their lifestyle career into a debt-crushing machine.
There’s been much talk in recent months about US-based flight attendants earning pitiful amounts of money when they first start flying (and then some airlines will ask them to pay money if they quit).
It’s no doubt a struggle to survive, although many flight attendants keep on going in the hope that things will get better as they move the seniority ladder and start earning a decent hourly wage.
“I started to become bitter and super frustrated with passengers.”
One flight attendant describes how she started to feel after focusing on productivity to clear her debts.
Whether it be from their time as a new hire or other life struggles, flight attendants are just as susceptible to building up crippling debt just like anyone else, but working irregular hours can make it difficult to take on a second or even a third job to clear the credit cards.
There is, however, another trick that flight attendants can pull–just so long as they are truly committed and can really handle passengers all of the time. It’s all about productivity.
I’ve previously described becoming a flight attendant as a lifestyle career, giving up benefits of the regular 9-5 like having weekends and holidays off and being close to your family so that you can travel the world for free, kind of.
But the pursuit of that glamorous international lifestyle is exactly what can drive debt, suppressing potential earnings while meaning that you’re spending much more on room service, groceries, and expensive cocktails in foreign countries.
To clear the debt and start maximizing their earnings, flight attendants have to look at their jobs in a totally different way.
“I always wondered why the Continental FA’s [flight attendants] were always so big on productivity, and then something happened to me that made me go ‘Ah-Ha,'” one crew member wrote on Reddit after coming to the realization that she would have to change how she treated her career.
I flew with a 7-year FA who said: ‘I am 80k in debt, and I have decided I am going to work every day I can til that debt is clear. I figured it would take two years, and I looked at my own debt and decided maybe it was time for me to do the same,” the flight attendant continued.
“Suddenly, everything was about productivity. Every layover in a hotel was seen as ‘wasted time’ as I wasn’t able to spend money on that layover (i.e., have meals in Paris), nor could I make money sitting in that hotel either. So, really, productivity was what needed to change.”
“If I was going to clear debt, I had to get as close to 200 hours as possible. For that to happen, I needed high-time trips. High time turns.”
Life as a US-based flight attendant is not all about glamorous layovers.
With seniority, flight attendants in the United States have a lot of control over their schedule, getting to pick what trips they want, working on days off, and picking up or trading trips as they see fit.
You might think that flight attendants would use these privileges just to pick up premium international trips with long layovers, and while that might still be the case for some veteran crew members when it comes to ‘productivity,’ that’s the completely wrong strategy.
Unlike some countries, flight attendants in the US don’t really have an upper limit on how many flying hours they put in, although, be warned, putting in all of those hours can be tough on the body and the soul.
One flight attendant said she was working 110 flight hours a month over three years to clear her debt but cautioned: “Just make sure to take mental health breaks. Towards the end of that 3-year slog, I started to become bitter and super frustrated with passengers. I didn’t take enough breaks, and I was taking it out on customers and myself.”
Another flight attendant also offered some wise words of advice, telling crew members considering ‘productivity’ to “Do it in chunks.”
“Unless you’re risking your home, etc… Don’t forget to take that trip that allows you to breathe! Rest isn’t just 8 hours in bed. It’s a mental rest away from the noise of planes and airport hotels.”
“I’m not saying don’t do it. Just find a balance that keeps you happy with your progress *and* happy with your life!”
Another flight attendant questioned whether she could do it, telling the original crew member: “I have a lot of admiration for you, but surely it can’t be healthy to work that much. Please take care of your health while doing this, and remember to enjoy the little things in life, too!”
Matt’s take – The US is pretty unique in allowing flight attendants to work so much
The United States is pretty unique in allowing flight attendants to work so much, so long as some minimum rest requirements are complied with. In many countries, flight attendants are treated much like pilots when it comes to strict regulations to prevent the risk of fatigue.
For example, in Europe, the European Air Safety Agency (EASA) places hard and fast rules on how many duty hours a flight attendant can work in a month or a year.
Crew members cannot work more than 100 hours of flight time in any 28 consecutive days or 900 hours of flight time in any calendar year. A full-time long-haul flight attendant can easily come close to reaching these limits and will have to be assigned additional days off to avoid breaching the regulations.
Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since... most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.
