6 ms·

As European, is strange to see how old the US airline flight attendants are on average. In Europe, those jobs are mostly filled by young people, here in US, it

by llsf 6y ago

As European, is strange to see how old the US airline flight attendants are on average. In Europe, those jobs are mostly filled by young people, here in US, it tends to be the opposite of the spectrum. It is an interesting question. Where I come from there is a mandatory retirement, but it is financed by a universal pension system (like social security, based on how long and much you made during your whole life). Now once forcibly retired, nothing prevents you to start your own business and contracting if you want. Now, I get the no age discrimination intent. I am just wondering if this is a way to underpay people, and have 70yo people who still have to work to make it. Labor is more expensive in Europe probably because the pool of workers is smaller due to mandatory retirement age. I just wish I wont have to work at 70yo. Would be nice to volunteer, or something if I feel like.

zdragnar 6y ago
I think that depends on where you are... aren't some parts like Spain and Portugal facing seriously high unemployment rates for younger people?
- llsf 6y ago
  I am not sure what is the effect of mandatory retirement. Maybe it is negligible and does not change much the unemployment rates. Even if we would forcedly retire everyone at 65yo in US, it might not change much how we compute the unemployment rate. Do you know if in US we count people over 65yo who are not actively working as "unemployed" ?
nradov 6y ago
Flight attendants in the US are mainly older due to union contracts. The airlines went through rapid expansion many years ago, but since then there have been repeated rounds of layoffs. The layoffs go by seniority so younger flight attendants tend to get terminated and move on to other careers. (This happened to one of my relatives.)
- newacct583 6y ago
  Flight attendants in European airlines are surely unionized to at least the extent the US ones are. That doesn't seem right to me. Maybe you could make the argument that European airlines have grown more in recent decades or something, but then you'd be able to see that per-airline (e.g. Virgin is mostly new hires relative to United, but Lufthansa certainly isn't).
  - amadeuspagel 6y ago
    > Flight attendants in European airlines are surely unionized to at least the extent the US ones are. Can't find any data on this, but it doesn't seem obvious. The largest european airline is ryanair, which is an irish company. And "employers in Ireland can face [...] lesser constraints in terms of trade union involvement."[1] [1]: https://www.matheson.com/news-and-insights/article/key-distinctions-between-the-employment-law-landscape-in-the-u.s.-and-irela https://www.matheson.com/news-and-insights/article/key-disti...
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      Ryanair is fairly unusual.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Local European governments are also very keen bringing into Ryanair attention that there are laws to obey. If anything they are the gold standard on how to do court gimmicks.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    US airlines have largely consolidated over the last decades and new airplanes don't require as much staff as before (basically cramming an airliner full with cheap seats instead of more staff-intensive premium offerings) which means there were layoff series.
ghaff 6y ago
I can't speak to Europe but I've been directly told that with a number of the Asian carriers, the expectation is that young, attractive, educated women become flight attendants, travel the world for a few years, get married, and leave.
- Kalium 6y ago
  Once upon a time, I knew a mid-20s Chinese national lady who was a flight attendant for more or less this reason. She - and I will not presume to speak more broadly than this particular lady - definitely used it to meet and date.
- Animats 6y ago
  That was the norm in the US until the 1980s. PSA stewardess class, 1974.[1] [1] http://psa-history.org/site/assets/files/4429/7406.jpg http://psa-history.org/site/assets/files/4429/7406.jpg
Proziam 6y ago
> Labor is more expensive in Europe probably because the pool of workers is smaller due to mandatory retirement age. Labor is more expensive in Europe because of taxes, primarily. The fully loaded cost of a professional employee is often double their salary, and sometimes more.
- baron816 6y ago
  Taxes to pay for pensioners, mind you.
  - Proziam 6y ago
    Unfortunately that system isn't working for everyone. If you track the economic power of a country like Germany, their people should be wealthy beyond reason. Instead, the people are becoming poorer each generation. https://www.dw.com/en/poverty-increasingly-threatens-elderly-germans-says-study/a-50393805 https://www.dw.com/en/poverty-increasingly-threatens-elderly...
    - pasabagi 6y ago
      This seems like a typical outcome of Germany's approach to welfare in general - everything is extremely granular. Depending on what you're paid, how you work, and how long you've been working, you can expect utterly different benefits across the spectrum. Coming from a country with a flat pension, the difference is visible. There are a lot of really poor old people here. Then again, there are many fewer really poor young people.
CydeWeys 6y ago
Are US flight attendants older than the average US worker? I suspect not. Also, why is it mainly young people doing these jobs in other countries? Is that even a good thing? Why should relatively older, but still perfectly capable, workers be excluded from this profession? Is this job simply not as well compensated in other countries, so people leave it as they grow older and seek higher salaries?
- secabeen 6y ago
  There's a lot of weird setups in how the us flight attendant pay work, largely due to how the union negotiates them. FAs are paid only while the plane door is closed, so there's a huge incentive to fly long-hauls. Also, flights are allocated by seniority, so there is a pay-your-dues period of short low-paying flights done by workers with less experience, and high-pay long haul flights are full of older, more experienced FAs.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
Not too long after 9/11, I was on a flight from San Francisco to Seoul. We were almost done boarding, waiting for the final passengers to get seated. I was in a bulkhead aisle seat, we were about ready to take off and a flight attendant took her seat facing me, and started making small talk. At one point I commented on how reassuring it was to have such a mature flight crew. She smiled and motioned towards a fight attendant in first class who was finishing her tasks. "See her? She's number 2". "Number 2?". "Yes, she has the 2nd most seniority of all 22,000 United flight attendants. 46 years." She went on, "One time, she missed her flight because she drove to the airport for a flight and fell asleep in the employee lounge. When she woke up, she thought she had already completed her flight and went back home."
danaris 6y ago
Now, this may be based on incorrect assumptions about your flying habits, but my understanding is that at least with many of the US airlines, the routes that flight attendants fly on are allotted by seniority, and the longer routes are more coveted, since they allow you to take a smaller number of flights per week to make up the number of flight hours required. This means that newer, younger flight attendants tend to fly the short domestic flights, while the longer, transoceanic flights (like the ones European travelers are more likely to see American airlines for) tend to be staffed by the older flight attendants.
- dbcurtis 6y ago
  Not so much allotted as at many airlines it is a “bid” process. You put in for a route, and it goes to the most senior bidders. The perq of being senior is more likelihood of getting choice routes.
- llsf 6y ago
  Even on the ground, at the airport the people checkin for tickets are way older in US, than their counterpart in Europe. It is not just flying attendants. But maybe this is specific to US airlines.
dcolkitt 6y ago
> Labor is more expensive in Europe Where are you getting that from? Average American wages are $63,000 per worker. Higher than any country besides Switzerland, Iceland and Luxembourg[1]. To compare to this five largest EU members: Americans are paid 28% higher than Germans, 41% higher than Frenchmen, 59% higher than Brits, and 64% higher than Italians and Spaniards. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...
- 0xfaded 6y ago
  Labor is more expensive in Europe because workers rights add significant overhead. A simple example, 37.5h work weeks and 5 weeks paid holiday is pretty standard. Then there are severances. Also, if you look at the median US wages, it's appearant how much does there is at the top. Yes, Americans do have higher wages overall, but this is because there are fewer worker rights and less hidden costs for the employer. This does not mean labor is cheaper. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_wage_and_mean_wage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...
  - em-bee 6y ago
    in germany the employer overhead per employee is almost 100%
    - 0xfaded 6y ago
      That's amazing. In Denmark it's closer to 25% if you don't count severances.
      - em-bee 6y ago
        we may be comparing different numbers. i doubt it's that low. i don't know the specifics in germany, but there is net salary and gross salary, and there are employer contributions beyond gross salary, as well as other costs. my understanding is that put everything together, the cost per employee is twice the gross salary. this includes cost for equipment, work space and whatever else you need to spend money on to help an employee to do their job. 25% seems very low. it's possibly only the taxes and insurance and related contributions. or maybe denmark calculates the gross salary different? i searched a few resources and found references ranging from 1.5 to 1.7. so not quite 100%. here is a swiss example with a compact table. https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-mitarbeiter-wirklich/ https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-mit... this one suggests a cost of 6900 for a 4500 gross salary. but it also adds hiring a manager per 10 employees and splitting that up among the employees being managed, bringing the cost to 8285. so yeah, it depends on what numbers we are actually comparing

by llsf 6y ago

zdragnar 6y ago

I think that depends on where you are... aren't some parts like Spain and Portugal facing seriously high unemployment rates for younger people?

llsf 6y ago
I am not sure what is the effect of mandatory retirement. Maybe it is negligible and does not change much the unemployment rates. Even if we would forcedly retire everyone at 65yo in US, it might not change much how we compute the unemployment rate. Do you know if in US we count people over 65yo who are not actively working as "unemployed" ?

nradov 6y ago

Flight attendants in the US are mainly older due to union contracts. The airlines went through rapid expansion many years ago, but since then there have been repeated rounds of layoffs. The layoffs go by seniority so younger flight attendants tend to get terminated and move on to other careers. (This happened to one of my relatives.)

newacct583 6y ago
Flight attendants in European airlines are surely unionized to at least the extent the US ones are. That doesn't seem right to me. Maybe you could make the argument that European airlines have grown more in recent decades or something, but then you'd be able to see that per-airline (e.g. Virgin is mostly new hires relative to United, but Lufthansa certainly isn't).
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  > Flight attendants in European airlines are surely unionized to at least the extent the US ones are. Can't find any data on this, but it doesn't seem obvious. The largest european airline is ryanair, which is an irish company. And "employers in Ireland can face [...] lesser constraints in terms of trade union involvement."[1] [1]: https://www.matheson.com/news-and-insights/article/key-distinctions-between-the-employment-law-landscape-in-the-u.s.-and-irela https://www.matheson.com/news-and-insights/article/key-disti...
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    Ryanair is fairly unusual.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Local European governments are also very keen bringing into Ryanair attention that there are laws to obey. If anything they are the gold standard on how to do court gimmicks.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  US airlines have largely consolidated over the last decades and new airplanes don't require as much staff as before (basically cramming an airliner full with cheap seats instead of more staff-intensive premium offerings) which means there were layoff series.

ghaff 6y ago

I can't speak to Europe but I've been directly told that with a number of the Asian carriers, the expectation is that young, attractive, educated women become flight attendants, travel the world for a few years, get married, and leave.

Kalium 6y ago
Once upon a time, I knew a mid-20s Chinese national lady who was a flight attendant for more or less this reason. She - and I will not presume to speak more broadly than this particular lady - definitely used it to meet and date.
Animats 6y ago
That was the norm in the US until the 1980s. PSA stewardess class, 1974.[1] [1] http://psa-history.org/site/assets/files/4429/7406.jpg http://psa-history.org/site/assets/files/4429/7406.jpg

Proziam 6y ago

> Labor is more expensive in Europe probably because the pool of workers is smaller due to mandatory retirement age. Labor is more expensive in Europe because of taxes, primarily. The fully loaded cost of a professional employee is often double their salary, and sometimes more.

baron816 6y ago
Taxes to pay for pensioners, mind you.
- Proziam 6y ago
  Unfortunately that system isn't working for everyone. If you track the economic power of a country like Germany, their people should be wealthy beyond reason. Instead, the people are becoming poorer each generation. https://www.dw.com/en/poverty-increasingly-threatens-elderly-germans-says-study/a-50393805 https://www.dw.com/en/poverty-increasingly-threatens-elderly...
  - pasabagi 6y ago
    This seems like a typical outcome of Germany's approach to welfare in general - everything is extremely granular. Depending on what you're paid, how you work, and how long you've been working, you can expect utterly different benefits across the spectrum. Coming from a country with a flat pension, the difference is visible. There are a lot of really poor old people here. Then again, there are many fewer really poor young people.

CydeWeys 6y ago

Are US flight attendants older than the average US worker? I suspect not. Also, why is it mainly young people doing these jobs in other countries? Is that even a good thing? Why should relatively older, but still perfectly capable, workers be excluded from this profession? Is this job simply not as well compensated in other countries, so people leave it as they grow older and seek higher salaries?

secabeen 6y ago
There's a lot of weird setups in how the us flight attendant pay work, largely due to how the union negotiates them. FAs are paid only while the plane door is closed, so there's a huge incentive to fly long-hauls. Also, flights are allocated by seniority, so there is a pay-your-dues period of short low-paying flights done by workers with less experience, and high-pay long haul flights are full of older, more experienced FAs.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

Not too long after 9/11, I was on a flight from San Francisco to Seoul. We were almost done boarding, waiting for the final passengers to get seated. I was in a bulkhead aisle seat, we were about ready to take off and a flight attendant took her seat facing me, and started making small talk. At one point I commented on how reassuring it was to have such a mature flight crew. She smiled and motioned towards a fight attendant in first class who was finishing her tasks. "See her? She's number 2". "Number 2?". "Yes, she has the 2nd most seniority of all 22,000 United flight attendants. 46 years." She went on, "One time, she missed her flight because she drove to the airport for a flight and fell asleep in the employee lounge. When she woke up, she thought she had already completed her flight and went back home."

danaris 6y ago

Now, this may be based on incorrect assumptions about your flying habits, but my understanding is that at least with many of the US airlines, the routes that flight attendants fly on are allotted by seniority, and the longer routes are more coveted, since they allow you to take a smaller number of flights per week to make up the number of flight hours required. This means that newer, younger flight attendants tend to fly the short domestic flights, while the longer, transoceanic flights (like the ones European travelers are more likely to see American airlines for) tend to be staffed by the older flight attendants.

dbcurtis 6y ago
Not so much allotted as at many airlines it is a “bid” process. You put in for a route, and it goes to the most senior bidders. The perq of being senior is more likelihood of getting choice routes.
llsf 6y ago
Even on the ground, at the airport the people checkin for tickets are way older in US, than their counterpart in Europe. It is not just flying attendants. But maybe this is specific to US airlines.

dcolkitt 6y ago

> Labor is more expensive in Europe Where are you getting that from? Average American wages are $63,000 per worker. Higher than any country besides Switzerland, Iceland and Luxembourg[1]. To compare to this five largest EU members: Americans are paid 28% higher than Germans, 41% higher than Frenchmen, 59% higher than Brits, and 64% higher than Italians and Spaniards. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

0xfaded 6y ago
Labor is more expensive in Europe because workers rights add significant overhead. A simple example, 37.5h work weeks and 5 weeks paid holiday is pretty standard. Then there are severances. Also, if you look at the median US wages, it's appearant how much does there is at the top. Yes, Americans do have higher wages overall, but this is because there are fewer worker rights and less hidden costs for the employer. This does not mean labor is cheaper. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_wage_and_mean_wage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...
- em-bee 6y ago
  in germany the employer overhead per employee is almost 100%
  - 0xfaded 6y ago
    That's amazing. In Denmark it's closer to 25% if you don't count severances.
    - em-bee 6y ago
      we may be comparing different numbers. i doubt it's that low. i don't know the specifics in germany, but there is net salary and gross salary, and there are employer contributions beyond gross salary, as well as other costs. my understanding is that put everything together, the cost per employee is twice the gross salary. this includes cost for equipment, work space and whatever else you need to spend money on to help an employee to do their job. 25% seems very low. it's possibly only the taxes and insurance and related contributions. or maybe denmark calculates the gross salary different? i searched a few resources and found references ranging from 1.5 to 1.7. so not quite 100%. here is a swiss example with a compact table. https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-mitarbeiter-wirklich/ https://www.runmyaccounts.ch/2013/07/wie-viel-kostet-ein-mit... this one suggests a cost of 6900 for a 4500 gross salary. but it also adds hiring a manager per 10 employees and splitting that up among the employees being managed, bringing the cost to 8285. so yeah, it depends on what numbers we are actually comparing