Over the decade since 9/11, there have been many ceremonies, new memorials, congressional plaudits and remembrances for those who died in that day’s tragic events. This year there will be more.
Sadly, few of these events will include flight attendants, the first casualties of the terrorist attacks. Even more unfortunate, flight attendants are now on the front lines of what has become a world of growing stress between the airlines and the public they are supposed to serve.
That’s a shame.
I’ve said so on every anniversary this last decade of the September attacks, and I’ll say it again this year.
Airline flight attendants are the unsung heroes and frontline foot soldiers in this country’s “war on terrorism.” Though experts cannot predict when there will be another terrorist attack, they can all agree that one will come. New plans are certainly being tested to attack our transportation systems.
Yet flight attendants continue to report to work every day, ready to do what they can to keep us safe and of course keep bread on their family’s tables. The traveling public takes them for granted, but worse, flight attendants are the unwitting front-line troops in the brewing tension between airlines and their passengers.
Flight attendants are faced with battles on three fronts — terrorists from the outside, disgruntled passengers inside increasingly packed airplanes and unanswered airline labor-management issues. At the same time, flight attendants are the public face of their airline, at least the human face in a world where human interaction is considered a money-losing activity by corporate airline bean counters.
We don’t see much of airline personnel these days. We don’t speak with them much. We don’t see them smile. Heck, let’s admit it, we don’t smile much ourselves while traveling by air.
What was once a friendly, customer-centric atmosphere has been outsourced to a system of computerized kiosks, impersonal baggage tagging, irritating and surprising fees, maze-like lines from check-in to security, and then a simple beep as an overworked (and soon to be replaced by another machine) gate agent glides boarding passes under a glimmering laser scanner barely glancing at passengers shuffling, heads down, past them to board.
This is the impersonalization of air travel. The only friendly face we come across is often the flight attendant’s.
Before we get to the airport, it costs travelers money to talk to a real person when making a reservation, so we deal with our booking on a computer.
At the airport, passengers are greeted by a friendly stand of kiosks, blinking, “Welcome to our airline, please slide your credit card into my slot.” Then the series of questions begins — Would you like to upgrade? Would you like to purchase extra frequent flier miles? Would you like to get on board first? Would you like to check a bag? Two bags? Carry on a bag? Do you have a seat selection? Would you like to change your seat selection? Would you like a day pass for our executive club? How can we help part you with your money?
Then passengers enter the world of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Boarding passes are checked. Passengers are herded past stanchions through scanners and metal detectors. Blue rubber-gloved hands reach for IDs then faces are compared to their IDs. Blue-shirts bark the commands — Take off your shoes. Take your computer out of your briefcase. Throw away your water. That tube of toothpaste is too big. Hold up your hands.
Passengers are stripped naked by computers and X-rays, wondering what the little man behind the curtain can actually see. Carefully packed luggage is unpacked and pawed through by uniformed agents and left for travelers to repack. Wands are waved across our faces, along our backs, down our legs around our feet. Increasingly aggressive pat-downs find strange hands groping our groins and squeezing our breasts and probing our armpits. People we don’t know order us spread our legs and unbuckle our belts then they reach into our pants.
Then we get on the plane where a flight attendant can either be a source of comfort or a symbol of the system that makes travel so unpleasant and impersonal. Unfortunately, the same impersonal system we walk through to board an airplane is faced by flight attendants as well.
Once upon a time, the captain would walk through the cabin to say hello to passengers, joke with young children and hand out golden plastic wing pins. Not any more. When it comes to dealing with passengers, flight attendants are alone, more alone than ever. And unhappier than ever.
As passengers mutter about how flying has changed, flight attendants mutter as well. But their comments don’t focus on less food, no blankets, tighter seats, security theater and higher prices. They talk about a continuing series of layoffs, downsizings, longer hours reductions in pay and loss of retirement benefits.
Baggage screeners earn between $25,000 and $38,000 a year. TSA supervisors earn $45,000 to $70,000 a year. Federal air marshals make between $36,000 and $85,000 a year. These workers receive all the standard government perks of medical care, vacations and insurance. Meanwhile, flight attendants, the airlines’ real frontline troops, receive starting salaries of $18,000 a year or less, and don’t have a prayer of seeing $30,000 for at least three years. Vacation time in those years is meager, while time “on reserve” (waiting around in case another flight attendant is sick or gets stuck in traffic) seems to be endless.
To add insult to paltry pay, over the past years many flight attendants have had their retirement programs and pensions stripped from them by their airlines as they pay executives millions of dollars in bonuses.
it is not a pretty picture from anyone’s point of view. Passengers are reeling from less and less service delivered by the airlines. Flight attendants are finding themselves in conflict with the management. The security systems created as a reaction to 9/11 has made travel Orwellian. This frustration all meets inside an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet — the only place where air travel actually gets personal.
Today may be a good time for both passengers and flight attendants to take a deep breath and realize that we are all in this airline world together. We are playing different roles, but have no choice but to treat each other as we would like to be treated ourselves.
Amen.
Photo: Mujitra/Flickr/Commons
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
