Till FL 300 do us part? Pay me for boarding... Maybe?

For the week of May 2, 2022:

Till death (or clear air turbulence) do we part?

I know I report a ton of "messed up stuff" in this weekly set of shenanigans, so when I saw this last week I knew I had to include it.

A cute little story on Facebook about "Pam and Jeremy" on SWA's Facebook page last week. The couple tied the knot during the flight.

Last Tuesday, Pam and Jeremy joked that they should hop on a plane to get married in Vegas. It wasn't long before both realized that the other wasn't actually kidding, so they booked a flight for Sunday on one of our competitors, with a Vegas wedding chapel appointment Sunday night.

Come Sunday, the couple arrived to DFW from OKC, just to learn their connection to LAS was canceled. But that’s when their bad luck ended.

Chris, another passenger traveling to LAS from DFW, overheard Pam and Jeremy discussing how they might still get to Vegas in time for their appointment. Chris also happened to be an ordained minister and offered to marry the couple himself! The three went online, snatched up the last three seats to Vegas on a Southwest flight, and hurried together across town to Dallas Love Field.

As they boarded the flight, their Pilot, Captain Gil, noticed Pam’s wedding dress and asked her about it (oh yeah, we forgot to mention: Pam and Jeremy were in full wedding attire, just for the fun of it!). Pam explained their story and joked with Captain Gil they should just get married on the flight. For the second time that week, Pam was surprised to hear the words, “Let’s do it!”

Our Flight Crew sprung into action with toilet paper streamers and a snack mix sash for Chris. Julie, one of our Flight Attendants, stood in as Pam’s Maid of Honor. A professional photographer on the flight pulled out her camera for official wedding photos. Another Passenger passed around an old notebook for the whole cabin to sign with well wishes and their seat numbers, which was given to the bride and groom as a makeshift guestbook.

Congrats to the newlyweds on a memorable inflight wedding neither our Employees nor Passengers are likely to forget! We can't wait to welcome you back onboard the love airline.

So that's pretty fun! :D

Pay me for boarding... NOW!

About three/or four months ago, a flight attendant on Instagram that I follow forwarded to me this little petition on "Change.org."

At the time, there were only a few thousand signatories. I reached out to the woman (Domenica Rohrborn) who did the petition and ran "Pay me for Boarding" on Instagram.

It was an interesting premise. Flight attendants (as well as pilots) are paid for the time that the "door is closed." In other words, they are paid for actual flying time, not the amount of time they are "on duty" the way most people would think.

That whole schedule goes back to when trains primarily connected cities and towns in the US. I realize you just went like "what?" when you just read that, but yeah, modern air travel's labor laws are primarily rooted in the 1926 Railway Labor Act. (Here's a good article about it.)

The purposes of the RLA are to avoid any interruption of interstate commerce by providing for the prompt disposition of disputes between carriers and their employees and protecting the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively. The RLA imposes a duty on carriers and employees to exert every reasonable effort to make and maintain collective bargaining agreements, and to settle all disputes, whether arising out of the application of such agreements or otherwise.

If you're old like me - you might remember when President Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO was their Union) for striking.

RLA strikes again! (Or didn't strike! However, you may see it.)

So labor law in the airline industry is completely screwball - to be certain.

Now, as we all know, most of the airline labor industry is heavily regulated and represented by unions. The vast majority of labor in commercial aviation is represented by large and politically powerful unions such as the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and others.

So when I talked with Domenica via Instagram, I was intrigued. My first question was - essentially - where's your union? What she told me was that flight attendants often spent hours being "unpaid" dealing with customers. That as boarding times had increased and people spent more time waiting, the amount of "uncompensated" time had steadily increased. She said it required individual action and for the flying public to be made aware of what was going on.

Hmmm... Ok, I thought. My advice to her was to focus less on the mechanics of all, and focus instead on the impact the policies had on both flight attendants and the flying public.

So what followed was a series of messages about how it affected flight attendants. I'm not at all claiming any credit - it was all her. I'm just explaining how I wound up following this whole thing in the first place.

That was pretty much the last conversation I had with her. Since that conversation, I talked with flight attendants on Delta, United, and American. None of them were happy with how they were compensated, but as an executive, my thought was also - so what else is new?

In my experience, flight attendants bitch about a ton of things that are reasonably foreseeable crappy elements of the job. As LBJ famously said: "You cannot go into a whore house and then claim you didn't feel loved."

I mean it's shocking, right? To find gambling in the casino?

Now, I'm not at all against unions (quite the contrary especially when it comes to say companies like Amazon and Walmart). I'm also not against flight attendants being paid for their time properly (seems to me to be some quirk of the labor laws that pilots and flight attendants are just straight up compensated on time and hours.) But this issue struck me as being potentially viral - so I dipped my toe in the water. We had so much going on, that's about all we could do.

PayMeForBoarding wound up getting more and more press. Again - claiming no credit for that - that was all on them. It also became a hit on change.org and it became a cause celeb among Instagram FA's (which is probably the largest forum of them in the world if I had to guess.)

Then perhaps as a result of all the press, perhaps some other motives (which I'll get to in a minute), Delta announced that it is going to start paying flight attendants for boarding. Delta plans to begin the boarding pay,?half of flight attendants' hourly rates,?on June 2, according to a company memo. The carrier is also increasing boarding time for narrow-body flights to 40 minutes from 35, which the company says is "one of several steps we're taking to add resiliency to our operation."

Okie Dokie! Sounds like a win for the common man right?

Well... maybe... I'd like to believe that's what's going on.

The pay changes were announced as a?union campaign?by the Association of Flight Attendants that started in late 2019 picks up steam again as?the Covid pandemic?crisis wanes for airlines.

Delta's more than 20,000 flight attendants are not unionized, unlike those at other major U.S. airlines.

"As we get closer to filing for our union vote, management is getting nervous," the AFA said late Monday in a statement. The organization is the country's largest flight attendant union, representing cabin crews at United, Spirit, Hawaiian, Alaska, and Frontier, among others.

Not everyone sees the move as awesome. There's this article from OneMileAtATime that suggests the entire move by Delta is some kind of orchestrated ruse to stop Delta flight attendants from unionizing.

To summarize the "Facebook Memo" posted:

• We (the Union) have been trying to get this for 20 years, but you know, 9/11 and other shit got in the way. (Ok, that's an interesting argument. Isn't the whole point of having a collective bargaining unit that things like 9/11 don't "get in the way" of contract negotiations? I mean, after all, who is that friend of labor?)
• This is all just nonsense to try and keep Delta from unionizing. They're throwing the FA's a bone and the second the whole deal is done, they'll yank that sucker away as fast as they gave it.
• Look for the Union Label - it's the only way.

Given what I've heard from flight attendants at Delta, this little perk, while nice, probably has more to do with soothing what is expected to be a riot when Delta requires FA's to wear the purple uniforms or get bent - than paying them for boarding.

Personally, I don't like the purple uniforms because they look cheap and even the most attractive person looks like they're wrapped in polyester wearing them - but what do I know. All I can tell you is - that I have yet to meet an FA who told me they like them.

About "The View from 30,000 Feet":

"The View from 30,000 Feet" is a weekly newsletter distributed on LinkedIn that covers news stories we think you might have missed about aviation, aerospace, and travel. It is produced by?The Aviation Agency, an advertising agency that focuses exclusively on aviation, aerospace, and defense clients.

The views expressed in the newsletter are those of the Executive Editor (Bryan Del Monte) and are based on reports found across the Internet and from sources we think are reliable. If you have an idea or a contribution, feel free to write to?[email protected]. If you're a media source and you'd like our thoughts for a story,?reach out.

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