I've been a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines for 18 years. I commute from Houston to Los Angeles because I don't get paid enough to live there.

04.09.2023 - 13:57 / insider.com / Airlines

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kelese Richardson, the local vice president for Alaska AFA LAX and an Alaska Airlines flight attendant. It has been edited for length and clarity.

From a young age, I knew I wanted to be a flight attendant.

My aunt was an attendant on United Airlines, and I grew up watching her flying in the glamorous days of Pan Am and Trans World Airlines. When I saw her, the job flexibility, and the traveling, I thought, I would love to do that.

Today, I've been working for Alaska Airlines for 18 years, and I still love my job — but I don't love the way we get paid and treated.

Flight attendant wages change from person to person. When you first start, if you're lucky, you might make $25,000 a year. We're paid by the hour, not on a salary, and we have to fly 480 hours a year to get benefits for the next year. Otherwise, we're stuck with COBRA. Generally, I work between 80 and 90 hours a month.

For the average employee with a 40-hour workweek, 480 hours might not sound like a lot of time over a year, but we spend much more time doing unpaid work than the average person. We have to take time to check in at the airport and get on the plane early, we have to help with boarding and deplaning, and we have to sit in the airport between flights.

Our wage clock doesn't start until the airplane door gets shut, so all of that time, which adds up, is unpaid. I would estimate I work at least another 480 hours per year unpaid.

That cumulative time makes it harder for me to do the job I love. Alaska Airlines doesn't have bases in cheap cities, so I join the 40% of Alaska attendants who commute.

By commute, I mean I fly from Austin, Texas, to Los Angeles when I'm scheduled. The day before my shift, I spend the day getting to Los Angeles — about an hour to the Austin Bergstrom Airport, another three hours on the flight, and another 45 minutes to my "crash pad" outside of LAX. Of course, this time is also unpaid, but I can't afford to live in Los Angeles anymore.

It would be a lot easier if I didn't have to commute, but this is what I have to do to keep working the job I love.

The commute isn't the only difficult point of the job; a flight attendant has to wear a lot of hats. On board, we're babysitters, therapists, firefighters, bartenders, cooks, security guards. And all this work goes unrecognized by management. I'm just a number to them.

Despite our hard work, contract negotiations aren't going well at all. It's been about nine years since we started negotiating — including a period where negotiations were paused due to the pandemic.

We're not asking for anything crazy. The union members want to be paid for our time, like the now-unpaid labor done before flights and have