American Airlines had been forced to start a clampdown on flight attendants who have been illegally selling their desirable trips to premium destinations like London, Paris, and Rome to junior coworkers, despite repeated warnings over the years.
In an effort to circumvent the airline’s extensive restrictions on trading trips for pay, flight attendants at the Fort Worth-based carrier have reportedly been using secret code words that signify to the buyer that money will have to be paid to swap their desired trip.
Credit: LM Otero/AP/Shutterstock
The Seniority System and Coveted Routes
Like many airlines around the world, American Airlines uses a seniority-based bidding system to dictate what trips flight attendants will get to work each month.
Although flight attendants are required to work weekends, public holidays, and unsocial hours, this bidding system gives them a lot of control over what days they work, along with the trips they work, including different destinations and layovers.
Veteran flight attendants with lots of seniority get the best chance of building their own schedule, hence why flights to exotic international destinations are nearly always operated by longer-serving crew members.
Junior flight attendants, on the other hand, get very little say in what their schedule will look like from month to month and are often left with the worst domestic multi-day trips or straight reserve in which the airline can call them at any moment to work a flight that no one else wanted to.
“How did you get this trip?”
This is the question that junior flight attendant will often get asked by their senior coworkers when they find themselves working on a desirable international flight to a popular European or Australian city.
The insinuation is that they don’t have the seniority to be working such a coveted trip and should, therefore, not be there at all or have illegally paid a veteran colleague for the opportunity.
Of course, there are a multitude of reasons, apart from an illegal trade swap, why a newer flight attendant would find themselves working a premium international flight, although, the accusation has already been implied.
Decoding the “Secret Language” of Trip Trading
As part of American’s bidding system, flight attendants also get to ‘trade’ trips with coworkers, although this is meant to be a mutual arrangement, with crew members banned from profiteering from their seniority to sell the best trips to their junior coworkers.
This isn’t anything new, although the airline has recently run an analysis of its trip trading system and discovered that crew members were using secret code words that are widely understood amongst AA’s flight attendant workforce to mean that the trip trade is for pay.
Some of these code words included cookies, hugs, and kisses, as well as something as innocent sounding as thanks.
American Airlines’ Internal Memo: “Trips Cannot Be Bought, Sold or Brokered”
“Trips are assigned by the company and are not personal property,” the airline wrote in a leaked internal memo. “They cannot be bought, sold or brokered.”
“You may not offer or accept money or other items of value – directly or through coded language – to broker, buy, sell or trade trips with other flight attendants,” the memo continued.
“When someone tries to inappropriately profit by picking up a trip or through selling or trading, it violates the intent and integrity of our bidding systems and our standards of business conduct,” the memo warned.
The union tacitly approves the crackdown
Last year, American’s flight attendants ratified a new contract that even includes a new section that allows the airline and their union to agree upon “objective metrics” to ensure crew members are not abusing the scheduling systems by illegally selling or trading trips.
The idea behind this measure was for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) to protect one of the main benefits that comes with seniority.
Anyone caught abusing the system could, however, have access to trip and schedule bidding revoked, effectively putting them in the same pile as a new hire crew member.
Matt’s take – Why would anyone want to spend money working a job where they are meant to be earning a wage?
I’ve often said that being a flight attendant is a lifestyle career and, as such, crew members who previously had better-paid jobs or have extensive academic qualifications will choose this career over other lines of work.
But if you’ve become a flight attendant to see the world and end up working tiring multi-sector days in tiny cities dotted across the United States, you can understand why some might be tempted to offer some of their hard-earned cash to live the international life from time to time.
Suspicions quickly arise, however, when junior flight attendants are constantly working international flights, which are predominantly staffed by senior crew members.
Now you know why I would never fly any US carrier on any international flight…..cuz I don’t want a tired old post menopausal grandma/pa serving me a coffee whenever he/she damn well feels like it……