Flight Attendant career questions

E6Birdman

Well-Known Member
I am a retired Navy Aircrewman and curious about pay and typical daily life of an FA. Also, how much away time can I expect as I will be commuting? I love to travel and have time off so I'm curious about this career. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
Learn a foreign language and skip the regionals. I'm a pilot though, so that's just my two cents from what I've seen.
 
The girlfriend and I have been looking at this. Pay wise, we found nothing but disappointment. So far, we've found that United, Alaska, and ExpressJet don't pay during training. As far as first year pay is concerned, we've found that SkyWest comes in the lowest at $16300/yr while Mesa and Delta are at the high end at $22000/yr.
 
If you're going to commute I would say your best choice is Delta since they don't have straight reserve. I am biased though as I was a previous FA there for about a year and my wife still is. As far as days off you usually work about 15 days a month but in the busy months it can certainly hit 18 especially with low seniority.
 
Pay is crap for a newhire. The above mentioned salaries are accurate. As a newhire, you'll have a pretty lousy schedule, working all weekends/holidays and probably only having 8-10 days off a month. That improves, but it takes a few years. Trip trading/dropping (if you can afford it) gets easier as you gain seniority and get used to how the system works.

The 7 years I worked as a FA, I never did any 'fun' travel, because I couldn't afford to eat/sleep/get around there if I were to take a trip. Sure, the flights were 'free' (or very low cost), but then you've got to get a hotel (Airbnb is awesome, but it still costs money, hostels are a 'no thanks' for me), eating is expensive even if you have a rented apartment with a kitchen, and rentals cars, cabs or trains' costs add up. It was just too much on the little money I made. If I had another means of good income it would have been awesome! But I didn't.
 
Pay is crap for a newhire. The above mentioned salaries are accurate. As a newhire, you'll have a pretty lousy schedule, working all weekends/holidays and probably only having 8-10 days off a month. That improves, but it takes a few years. Trip trading/dropping (if you can afford it) gets easier as you gain seniority and get used to how the system works.

The 7 years I worked as a FA, I never did any 'fun' travel, because I couldn't afford to eat/sleep/get around there if I were to take a trip. Sure, the flights were 'free' (or very low cost), but then you've got to get a hotel (Airbnb is awesome, but it still costs money, hostels are a 'no thanks' for me), eating is expensive even if you have a rented apartment with a kitchen, and rentals cars, cabs or trains' costs add up. It was just too much on the little money I made. If I had another means of good income it would have been awesome! But I didn't.
Thanks for your input. That helps. Unfortunately, that is the common answer I receive.
 
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