Good: United Flight Attendants Getting Huge Raises, Retro Pay, And More

Here’s a fantastic and long overdue development…

May 24, 2025 - 15:25

Good: United Flight Attendants Getting Huge Raises, Retro Pay, And More

Here’s a fantastic and long overdue development…

United & AFA reach tentative agreement on new contract

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) and United Airlines have announced that they’ve reached a “historic agreement” on a new contract for 28,000 flight attendants. The union states that the agreement includes the following:

Industry leading compensation
Industry leading retro pay
Hotel, scheduling, reserve, and other quality of life improvements
In the first year alone, flight attendants will gain 40% of total economic improvements

Locally elected union leaders will be meeting on May 29 and May 30, 2025, to review the full details, No further details of the tentative agreement will be released until that review is concluded. Assuming that all goes as planned, the agreement will be sent to members for ratification. Generally that voting period takes a month, so best case scenario, the contract will likely be ratified by some point in July.

United flight attendants have a new tentative contract

I’m looking forward to learning the details of the agreement

In recent years, we’ve seen labor groups at most major US airlines score huge pay increases. Pilot contracts were negotiated first, followed by flight attendant contracts. This was intended to reflect the increased cost of living, plus the good performance of most carriers at the time.

We’ve seen flight attendants at Southwest, American, and Alaska, all ratify new contracts, in that order (Delta flight attendants also got raises, but aren’t unionized… for now). Negotiations at United have been most drawn out, and United flight attendants have now been with an amendable contract for nearly four years.

So I’m happy that flight attendants are finally looking at some significant pay increases, as they deserve them. Obviously the lack of a contract has caused quite some tension between management and the union, with roughly a dozen flight attendants even recently storming a media event to express their displeasure at the state of things.

United’s financial performance has improved nicely in recent years, as the carrier increasingly moves into Delta’s league, rather than being in American’s league. For the past couple of years, one major cost advantage that United has had is with labor costs. One would assume this contract will cost at least somewhere around $1 billion per year incrementally, and that says nothing of the retro pay that flight attendants are going to get. So I’m curious to see what this means for United’s bottom line.

I look forward to learning all the details, and what these drawn out negotiations accomplished. Are United flight attendants actually getting the best deal compared to rivals, or is this basically a copy of American’s new contract? We’ll find out soon…

This development should help improve morale

Bottom line

United flight attendants and management have reached a new tentative agreement, the details of which should be revealed next week. The agreement reportedly includes huge pay increases, retro pay, and other improvements with hotels, scheduling, and reserve.

I’m happy for United flight attendants, as the pay for junior flight attendants really has been so low that it’s hard to make ends meet. Here’s to hoping this agreement is ratified.

What do you make of United flight attendants finally having a tentative agreement?