The Pros and Cons of Flying (super belated)

As of October first, I am no longer a miserable, poorly compensated flight attendant. Now, I am a miserable, poorly compensated sales associate (of sorts…. Exact details to come at a later date). I left the airline for a number of reasons, the top among them being a knee injury that required surgery, and also made me super fat because I couldn’t walk all summer.

Because of this knee injury, I was all but forced into a desk job. So here I sit, making millions of phone calls a day whilst wearing stretchy office clothes (because I’m still fat from my knee injury). There are days when I miss flying, and days when I really don’t. Every job has its good points and its bad, and I thought I would detail some of the pros and cons for you. Whether you’re considering a career as a flight attendant, know someone who is, or are simply curious about the life, the following is a list of my personal highs and lows (pardon the pun) of a life in the sky.

Pros:

-You get to fly for free. This has its limits, in that you aren’t guaranteed a ticket, so you basically have to make plans to go somewhere the day of, and never know if you will actually be able to get there or back. But it’s still a pretty nice perk if you don’t mind being flexible about your travel plans. (Like really flexible).

-You don’t have to deal with a boss constantly bugging you about dumb stuff. You’re pretty much left alone by management and free to do your own thing, provided you follow federal regulations. It’s nice to be the only one in charge of yourself on a day-to-day basis.

-You get a lot of exercise. I walked several miles per day between back and forth on the plane, switching planes between flights, and general time in the airport. I was often too busy to eat, and didn’t get meal breaks, so I maintained a decent weight when I was flying.

 

Cons:

-Your schedule is obnoxiously unpredictable. When on reserve, you’re on call and never know whether or not you will be working, or for how many hours or days.

-It’s extremely hard to have a life. Because you can be gone for a week at a time, and you won’t necessarily know ahead of time that you’ll be gone, you can’t very well make plans.

-You won’t make nearly as much money as you think you will. The hourly rate is generous, but at my airline, we were only guaranteed to work 70 hours per MONTH. That adds up to just about minimum wage.

These are just a few of the things to consider when thinking about how awesome you think flight attendant life is. It is better than a lot of jobs, but it’s definitely not without its faults.

 

P.S. I wrote this post back in December 2014, but because of my lack of free time due to the fact that I was spending 6 days a week making fruitless phone calls, it never got posted.