Flight Attendant Union Chief Nelson Rules Out Repeat of Record Raises

The record pay raises flight attendants won in the last bargaining round won't happen again, Association of Flight Attendants International President Sara Nelson said Thursday at the Skift Aviation Forum in New York City. Her union is now aiming for smaller, more regular increases through more frequent negotiations instead.

"I don't think that we're going to see the kind of increases that we saw this last time again, unless the industry turns around," Nelson said. "Unless we have peace on Earth and everything is going swimmingly."

Why the last round was different

Nelson framed the recent wave of contracts as effectively the first real bargaining since 9/11. Years of bankruptcies, mergers, and pandemic delays left contracts "four, five, six years late," she said, and the resulting raises — including massive jumps for both flight attendants and pilots — were catch-up pay, not a new baseline.

Mainline contracts at carriers like American and United are now "pretty much buttoned up." That changes the union's posture: less about recovering lost ground, more about holding it. The takeaway: airlines shouldn't read the end of catch-up raises as relief on labor costs, because the fights are simply moving elsewhere.

What's next: regional pay, Delta, and data

Nelson laid out three priorities:

• Regional pay gaps. Flight attendants at regional carriers such as PSA Airlines and Endeavor Air earn roughly half of mainline pay, she said. They lack boarding pay and are increasingly based in expensive cities like Chicago and New York.
• Delta organizing. Delta remains the only major U.S. airline without unionized flight attendants, and Nelson said the campaign is "really close," with a 52% increase in activists since January.
• Worker data protections. The AFA's objections to Google's purchase of Spirit's employee data in a bankruptcy auction produced revised terms. Nelson said that outcome will serve as the template for data protection demands at other airlines.

The regional fight has direct cost implications for carriers that feed mainline networks. Halving a pay gap between regional and mainline crews would raise labor costs at exactly the operators with the thinnest margins — a squeeze sellers of regional capacity will have to price in.

Can boarding pay survive?

Boarding pay, now standard at most major U.S. carriers, will be defended in future talks. "The public is on our side. So there's no way they're going to claw that back," Nelson said.

That's a promise, not a settlement — management teams facing softer demand will test it. What's certain is the union's strategy: shorter bargaining cycles, new fronts at regionals and Delta, and data rights as a contract issue, not a side note.