American Airlines Spends $32 Million on Flight Attendant ‘Boarding Pay’ in Just Five Months

American Airlines has already paid flight attendants $32 million in boarding pay within the first five months of introducing the benefit.

Tails of American Airlines airplanes parked at a gate at the airport

American Airlines has paid out $32 million in ‘boarding pay’ to flight attendants in just five months between April and August 2025 – the first time that crew members at the Fort Worth-based carrier have been paid for the boarding process.

Until April 2025, flight attendants were only paid for the time they spent in the air. Flight attendants were effectively working for free right up to the point that the plane pushed back from the gate.

a woman holding a booklet in front of her face

American Airlines flight attendants have been earning boarding pay for the past six months.

This was the traditional way that US-based flight attendants have been paid, with an inflated hourly pay rate reflecting the fact that crew members could be at work for hours before they actually started earning any money.

The problem with this method was that it massively favored long-serving crew members who had the seniority to pick long-haul flights with the maximum amount of time in the air to earn money.

In contrast, less senior flight attendants were stuck working much shorter domestic flights with multiple legs per day… that meant more time on the ground boarding, deplaning, and moving between planes, without earning any money.

As the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) points out, the boarding period is “among the busiest and most stressful parts of our job.”

The decision by more airlines to introduce boarding pay not only “establishes the principle that our time on the ground has value and must be paid,” as APFA argues, but also reflects the fact that without it, newer flight attendants were forced into financial hardship.

Although boarding pay does, clearly, increase labor costs for American Airlines, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all flight attendants are earning lots more money.

It’s important to remember that not only is boarding pay paid at only 50% of the regular hourly flying pay, but that it is weighted to support lower-earning new-hire flight attendants working short domestic flights.

So far, four US airlines offer flight attendants boarding pay, with the other three carriers being Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and SkyWest.

Despite the fact that boarding pay still hasn’t been adopted by the majority of US airlines, there are already calls to extend the concept to ‘ground duty pay’, which would ensure that flight attendants are compensated for all the time that they are at work but not flying.

The current issue with ground duty pay is that it would invariably mean airlines would want to negotiate an adjustment to the hourly flying rate, with this pay either remaining stagnant or even going downwards. This would, of course, be deeply unpopular among some flight attendants who spend most of their time flying long-haul routes.

Despite this major obstacle, APFA says it “will keep pushing in future contracts to secure full recognition for all the work we perform.”

In the meantime, the union did, at least, secure a minor concession in the latest contract that is designed to stop American Airlines from scheduling long periods of waiting time on the ground between domestic flights – known in aviation speak as a ‘sit.’

If a sit drags on for more than two and a half hours, flight attendants now earn one minute of pay for every two minutes of additional sit time. In April and May 2025, that concession secured additional compensation for 18,000 flight attendants who had extended sits.

This article was originally published by PYOK.