Inside United’s ‘Game-Changing’ Flight Attendant Deal: Raises, Retro Pay, and Hotel Upgrades

Regional leaders of the United Airlines flight attendant union have unanimously voted to endorse a ‘historic’ new tentative bargaining agreement following two days of in-depth meetings to scrutinize the deal and decide whether it was good enough to put to a formal vote of 28,000 members.

While many details of the agreement remain a closely guarded secret until Tuesday, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) has now given us more of an indication of what the “industry-leading” contract will include–and what it won’t include.

After nearly five years of bargaining, which, at times, had been bitter and acrimonious, the union finally reached a deal with the union on May 23 following two weeks of intensive negotiations in Chicago to hammer out the final details.

The final deal includes:

• Big wage increases
• Retroactive pay
• Boarding pay
• No new scheduling system
• Layover improvements
• Preserved healthcare benefits

Let’s take a look at each of these areas in more detail:

Big wage increases

The union isn’t expected to publish a high-level summary of the tentative agreement until June 2, which will include a table of the proposed new wage scales. That being said, it has already been revealed that flight attendants should expect to see total economic improvements of 40% in the first year of the contract.

On Friday, the union also promised flight attendants “the highest compensation and the largest overall economic improvement in the history of our careers.”

How this compares to other rival airlines, such as American Airlines and Delta, remains to be seen, although it’s understood that the union wanted to “go last” in securing a contract amongst major carriers in order to ensure the very best deal for its members by comparing United’s offer against their competitors.

But pay attention to the language that the union has used, touting the wage deal as the best United’s flight attendants have ever seen rather than a deal that beats all other carriers hands down.

Hard-Fought Retro Pay Included

United’s flight attendants haven’t had a pay raise since 2021, when their contract last became amendable, so the union wanted the airline to offer a so-called retro bonus to make up for those five years.

Retro bonuses have become a fairly standard part of new airline contracts as they can often take years to negotiate, although United had been steadfastly refusing to offer any retroactive pay.

The inclusion of retro pay, therefore, is a hard-fought concession that the union eventually managed to squeeze out of the airline.

Boarding Pay Finally Secured—But Not Without Compromise

Traditionally, US-based flight attendants are only paid an hourly rate when they are flying, which starts from the moment the plane pushes back from the gate to the point that it arrives at its destination.

That meant that all the time that flight attendants spend on the ground, including busy periods like boarding and deplaning, went unpaid.

Delta’s non-unionized flight attendants were the first in the industry to be offered boarding pay, while crew members at both Alaska Airlines and American Airlines have also secured boarding pay in their new union contracts.

Typically, boarding pay is paid at half the usual hourly flying pay, although American Airlines has introduced a slightly different system.

This should be seen as a win for the United flight attendant union as the airline had been refusing any form of boarding pay system. However, AFA-CWA had initially wanted a new concept called Ground Duty Pay that would pay flight attendants for any time they spent on the ground but on duty–such as walking from one plane to the next.

The fact that the union has described this part of the contract as boarding pay would suggest they conceded in this area.

Union Blocks Controversial Scheduling System Push

United had been pushing to introduce a new scheduling system to dictate the monthly flying schedules for flight attendants, which is called a preferential bidding system or PBS.

PBS allows flight attendants to bid for their preferred destinations, layovers, days off, and the aircraft they want to work on for the following month, as well as other factors like avoiding early morning reports or red-eye flights.

These bids are fed into a computer that uses various algorithms to balance the preferences of individual flight attendants against the airline’s operational needs, ensuring that all flights are properly staffed, even if it means not necessarily giving flight attendants exactly what they bid for.

In comparison, United currently uses a much older line bidding system, in which flight attendants bid in seniority order for pre-constructed trips.

The union had rejected a PBS system because they argued it lacks transparency and makes it difficult for flight attendants to understand why their bids have not been awarded.

Layover Hotel Upgrades After Years of Complaints

Flight attendants would, rather understandably, like to stay in central downtown hotels with a minimum level of services like 24-hour room service and other creature comforts.

The current flight attendant contract, however, allowed United to choose layover hotels that are ‘downtown-like,’ and in the last couple of years, this has led to some rather interesting hotel choices.

In particular, United has moved flight attendants out of city center hotels in Amsterdam, London, and Rome to secondary cities, which are separate from the better hotels that pilots get to stay in.

Details of the hotel improvements have not yet been made public, but expect the union to have addressed this discrepancy – the union has promised “significant” improvements in this area.

Healthcare Benefits Preserved at Eleventh Hour

United has agreed to preserve healthcare benefits as they are today rather than introducing a new requirement for flight attendants to work a minimum number of flying hours to access their healthcare plan.

The union is also touting many other improvements to the overall contract, which is likely to mean that United has dropped a raft of other concessions it had been demanding, such as getting rid of additional payments for working at night, reducing the amount of rest flight attendants enjoy on their layovers, and making working days longer.

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What’s next?

Now that the tentative agreement has been approved by local leaders, the next step will be to publish summaries of the deal and conduct in-person roadshows with flight attendants across the United States.

A formal vote will then kick off on July 7 and finish on July 29. We’ll know the results the same day as the ballot closes, and if ratified, the new contract will become effective on July 30.