Is Working as a Flight Attendant For Me?

Although my Flight Attendant position with Comair was the best job I’ve ever had, it didn’t come without some sacrifice and work. Working as a flight attendant has great rewards though!

Before you try to become a flight attendant, take a good, long look at what’s to come.

Is This for You?

Being a flight attendant requires a lot of time, energy, and sacrifice.  Take a look at the questions below and some time to think about them.

• Am I willing to be away from my home for at least a couple weeks out of the month?
• Am I willing to be away from home for possibly a week at a time?
• Am I willing to commute if I am unwilling to move to, live out of my car, or live in a crash pad where I am based?
• Am I willing to possibly take a pay decrease (depending on what your hiring airline will pay)?
• Am I willing to handle people when they are irrational because of the stress of travel?
• Am I willing to work with a completely random work schedule of days that could last up to 15 hours?
• Am I willing to work when I’m not getting paid working as a flight attendant? (different airlines start their hourly pay at different times)

Picking an Airline

For the most part, there are three types of airlines for flight attendants:

1. “Commercial/Normal” – These are the most common that people would think of when it comes to air travel.  Delta, Southwest, American are just a few.  They go wherever, and you can end up wherever.
2. “Out for the Day” – These airlines will most likely only go out from the hub, and back to the hub.  Allegiant first comes to mind.
3. “Private/Corporate” – I haven’t had much experience talking with these flight attendants, but here is an interview with one.  It seems like much more work and organization, but you only deal with a handful of passengers per flight.  Here is another article.

Prepare for Interviews!

I began the hiring process a few times.  Each airline did it a little differently.  Here’s a short breakdown of how those interviews went!

• United:  Before they became the Devil’s airline recently, I applied for United two months before I was to exit the Army.  They had a three-interview system, but before I could even get the first phone call, they told me they wouldn’t move forward with me at all while I was still in the Army.  I didn’t see why not because I was in Recruiting so there basically was no chance of me going anywhere.
• SkyWest:  SkyWest does interviews all around the country, so check their site for updates!  I had mine in Cincinatti.  We had a group session with about 20 applicants.  We had to go up in front of everyone and answer a couple questions.  Then we broke down into smaller groups with the interviewers and talked for a little while.After that, we left the room so the interviewers could talk about us for about 45 minutes.  They then posted the names of those that passed that round on a piece of paper on the door.  That’s as far as I made it.  Not sure what I did wrong in this interview…except maybe I wasn’t a good looking female, because those were the ones that made it to the next interview! 🤣
• SkyBus:  We had a huge group session with about 50 applicants.  After a brief talk about the company, we each had to go up in front of everyone and tell everyone why we would be the be a good fit.  Honestly, after the talk about the company, I didn’t feel I wanted to work for SkyBus.  They mostly flew out of and back in to Columbus, OH, their hub.  That meant travel wasn’t a big thing here, and that was the big thing for me. I went up front of everyone and said that I can sell kids on the Army, I sure as heck can sell a SkyBus watch on the plane!  Needless to say, I didn’t get picked.  Only about 1% of me wanted to work there, mainly for the possible chance of the company growing and expanding operations.I’m not sure what the process was from there.  We were just told that they would get in contact with us.
• Comair:  We had a group interview with another stand-in-front-of-everyone-and-answer-a-question session.  Then, we actually got one-on-one interviews with people from the company!  I think it was a big part that got me the job – my Army experience made half of the questions, mostly because she asked about long, sporadic days in which things can change last minute.They finalized the session by saying we would receive a letter in the next couple weeks whether we were picked for training or not.  The interview was in Cincinnati, and I was driving about 90 minutes back to Columbus.  About halfway, they called me and offered the job, so I must have done alright!

I am not a fan of interviewing, so I was happy to have it only take three tries.  The only preparation I made for interviewing was reading Kiki Ward’s The Essential Guide to Becoming a Flight Attendant, a little research online, and talking to a few flight attendants.  I remember I even emailed Kiki with a couple questions, and she answered them!

There are “flight attendant schools” out there that will charge you a lot of money to learn about being a flight attendant and how to get the job, but if you want, you can spend all that money.

Some notes that I think helped me:

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• Always make eye contact, smile, and acknowledge everyone.  The interviewers are watching for personality.  Dress your best, of course.  I even went as far to try to dress like the flight attendants of the airline, like Kiki Ward suggested.

• Army experience definitely helped. There’s no denying that.
• Of course being an infantryman didn’t matter much, but I focused more on my public interaction experience.  Recruiting for the army put me out in front of people, and I talked about how I enjoyed giving speeches during that tour.  I also talked about how working as a cashier at K-Mart opened me up to customer service.
• During group sessions, I did my best to not talk too little, or too much.  Always look at who is talking, and don’t focus on one or two spots when given the floor.
• Don’t sound like anyone else.  For example, when asked who my hero was, most people said someone in their family or some big time celebrity.  I said, “Fojay tha Phantaztik.”

You’ve Been Hired! Congrats! Prepare for Training!

Now the real work begins!

I don’t know if most airlines do it, but Comair sent a training packet with information I had to learn before I showed up for training.  It mostly was learning military time and airport codes.

There were at least 70 in my training class. By graduation time, less than half of us were still there.  Trainees dropped out for various reasons:

• Surprisingly, a few of them failed the military time/airport codes test we took on Day 1.  That’s kind of inexcusable. They most likely didn’t want to be there in the first place.
• Test failures were a cause for drop outs. We even got to retest.
• We had one get sent home because she was more than 15 minutes late to training.  They don’t take being late lightly in the airline industry.  If you are late to your plane, the pilots, gate agents, passengers, other flight attendants, ramp crew, and the airline are all going to be upset with you because you just caused every other flight that plane, those passengers, those pilots, and those flight attendants to be pushed back and possibly miss connections.

If I remember correctly, we only spent one day on customer service.  The rest of the time was focused on safety and aircraft information.

What do you suppose these were for?

This is where the “flight attendant schools” might come in handy.  Depending on the size of your airline and how many different aircraft they have will depend on how hard your training is.  Having some knowledge on the material might be helpful, but like I said, you get all that info during training.  Give up drinking and partying for a few weeks and you’ll be fine if you really want the job.

During your training, you will get all the information you need.  The instructors probably don’t want you to fail because if enough fail, they have to go find more applicants.

That being said, it was no joke.  Tests almost daily for three weeks, both written and hands-on, is tough.  However, you can ask questions during the training, and there is a lot of hands on training.  My group of trainers were as serious about it as they were about having fun, and I’m thankful to have had them.

On the Job

Here are some concerns you might have once you have the job:

• Pay – Some airlines pay much better than others.  Some airlines only pay once the wheels go up and come back down (when the plane takes off and lands).  This means you aren’t getting paid during the most stressful time, in my opinion, of the job – the boarding.  Make sure you ask about pay in the interview, and make sure you have financials straight.  Some flight attendants quit because they don’t make enough money, but they should’ve known that before they even started training.For an example of how bad some airlines could pay, read this article.  It’s about a pilot, and you can only imagine how much the flight attendants were paid if the pilots were paid so little.  The later adjusted wage more than likely had adjusted hours and per diem.
• Spontaneity – You will end up working some long days.  A day that is suppose to be 2 hours could easily turn in to 12 hours, and it’s your job to at least pretend that every hour is your first hour in front of passengers (and crew if you’re awesome)
• Passengers – I remember one time when a passenger asked me “What is Delta going to do about this weather?” The smart aleck  in me wanted to reply, “Sorry, we forgot to turn off the snow switch yesterday.”  The old saying goes, “When a passenger checks his/her luggage, common sense and decency is also checked.”  Sad, but it’s pretty true.  It’s amazing how very few people seem to try once they become passengers, so be ready to deal with some ridiculous situations.
• Housing – Picking up and moving to a new base is a big life decision.  If you are part of an airline with multiple, there could be a chance that you could be moved to a new base.  You have a few options:

1. Move to the new base.  If you don’t want to travel or go through the pain of commuting, this is your best bet.

2. Commute.  You could stay where you currently reside and fly in to your home base each time you have to go to work.  Hopefully you can easily check flight loads with your airline (it was quite easy with Delta).  Also, hopefully there are many airlines you can get on from your home to your new base.  If you live near a smaller airport,
you may want to think about moving near a larger airport.  At Comair, we did have a “Commuter Clause” in our contract that stated as long as you tried to get on the two flights that would get you to work on time, you didn’t get in to full trouble.

3. Crash pad. These are living quarters (usually a house) that a landlord will rent out to flight crewmembers and other airline personnel. I stayed in one crash pad with over 20 people staying it it! However, as most are flight crew, it would be rare if there were more than four people there a night. Be ready for anything though. In New York, one landlord I had started building smaller rooms in the house so he could put more crew members in it. It turned out he was just renting the house and never got permission from the owners to modify the house!

Also, make sure on the rules of the crash pad. I got kicked out of one crash pad after a couple months because I was on reserve. Someone complained to the owner that I “had too much stuff there,” which was just a large suitcase and some clothes. I was accused of living there and the house was not for reserve crew members. It would’ve been nice to know that beforehand!

4. Car.  When I got based in Detroit, there were actually a couple hotels that had a couple rooms designated as crash pads (each person in the room paid X amount per month and could stay as needed).  However, as I did not see myself hanging out in Detroit NEARLY as much as I did in New York, I chose to live out of my car.  I had everything in there I needed to live temporarily.  I had a membership to Anytime Fitness that was nearby and I showered/worked out there.  Otherwise, all my stuff (I didn’t really have a lot) was in my old room in my parents’ house.  When I wasn’t working, I almost always was flying somewhere.  If I ever wanted to take a break, there was a Days Inn nearby that had a special crew rate of $30/night.

• Gone – You are gone from home a lot, especially if you are commuting to your base.  I know a couple flight attendants who quit because they didn’t realize they were going to be gone so much.  During my SkyWest interview, a lady told all of us that she’s super awesome at time management – she had like 5 kids that she was able to manage all of their activities and schedules.  I knew right after saying that she wasn’t going to get hired.  Who is going to cover down on all her motherly duties?
• Reserve / On-Call – Some airlines put their least senior flight attendants on reserve, meaning that you sit around and wait to be called.  Sometimes you’ll know your trips days in advance, sometimes you’ll know minutes.  The whole time I was a flight attendant I was on reserve.  I didn’t mind it a whole lot, but a lot of my friends that ended up off reserve (meaning they actually had a work schedule) said life was much better.  Some airlines do a rotating reserve as well, so make sure you find out when you are interviewing.

Final Thoughts

If you’re young, single, love to travel, and like working with people, this is the job for you.  I’m not saying that if you don’t meet any of that criteria to not go for it.  It’s a fulfilling job that allows you to travel.

There are flight crew members (flight attendants and pilots) that are known as “slam-clickers”, meaning when they get to the hotel, the slam the door and click the lock.  They never left the hotel room except maybe for some food.  I just don’t understand why someone would have a job that allowed you to travel for free but not travel or see the local area!  Although, I would say it’s excusable for those flight crew members that had stayed in the same city numerous times.

Also, I’ve thought about writing or doing something creative with a flight attendant as the main character. What do you think?

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