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Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

If you told me to guess whether Hell had frozen over with flying pigs overhead or Spirit Airlines would somehow make a move like this, I would have bet the farm on the former.

But in all seriousness, friend’s mom is a flight attendant for a major carrier as a sort of “semi-retirement” career. I can’t believe the stories she has to share when we see her. They are so underpaid and overworked. She likes the free travel though so I guess that’s something. She also has a pretty sarcastic personality and does a good job rolling her eyes at bullshit.

Some horror stories:

- Having to stop a couple from actively fornicating in their row (not even in the restroom)

- Being handed a leaking poopy diaper for her to “do something with”

- Routinely being harassed, sexually/physically/mentally

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> They are so underpaid and overworked.

Care to give any specifics? A quick Google shows flight attendant salry in the US can range anywhere from $17k/yr to $120k/yr, with an average answer closer to about $32k-$50k/yr

Can you define overworked? How many hours a week is your friend's mom working a week? 40? 50? 60?

If she's working 60 hours a week for $40k/yr, I would say she's partially to blame. It's up to you to not let your employer take advantage of you.

This comment is really lacking in compassion. I hope you realize eventually how crass it is to blame an employee just trying to feed and house themselves when they're faced with abusive or exploitive employers.

> They are so underpaid and overworked

If they were either, they would stop showing up.

Which is what happened, at one airline. Which is why the pay went up.

It's a little bit ridiculous to complain about low wages for a job in a thread about an employer tripling wages to ensure that the job in question is staffed.

> It's a little bit ridiculous to complain about low wages for a job in a thread about an employer tripling wages to ensure that the job in question is staffed.

It's a little bit ridiculous that their pay is so low that increasing it enough to keep it staffed means triple.

If your employer started getting desperate could they offer 3x your salary? Would they need to come anywhere close?

It is double pay through the next four days, so it's not like they're double salaries for new hires.

(It's also double pay; the headline has been corrected.)

3x my salary for a week? Definitely. In fact, I've gotten more than that as a end-of-year-good-job-we-did-it bonus.

Double pay is quite common over the holidays for any hourly role. Flight attendants are unionized so they're far from making minimum wage. This article is really not news, every decent company pays double time over the holidays.

At the time of the comment it was triple, not double.

Adding on, the aforementioned worker is semi-retired and gets travel perks as part of the package. I don't know what the value of their travel is, but it seems fair to consider that part of their pay (used or not).

The fair value of an unused travel perk would be $0, no?

Like health insurance that doesn't get used is valued well above $0, but it's providing risk mitigation. A travel perk isn't risk mitigation.

Sure but there are enough people who want & use the travel perk for it to be effectively part of the compensation. If you don't want that or can't use it then a career as a flight attendant is probably not very attractive.

You could make an argument that COVID has made it difficult/impossible to use that perk so perhaps that perk really is worth ~2x the salary.

Why assume a travel perk isn't risk mitigation, i.e. avoiding the spot price of a trip you wanted?

You're conflating common usage of "value".

An option contract on free travel would be worth significantly more than $0.

The travel is standby for flight attendants, so they don't go if flight is full. Though sometimes they take a folding seat.

A few years ago it was $10,000 a year to get added as pilot's family member for that travel perk. I don't know how that may have changed over the past couple years.

I did not understand why the carriers allowed that.

Oh, is that how they structure it?

It's not literally an option contract, but it's to point out something has value even if you don't exercise it.

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