Flight attendants union head Sara Nelson took to social media to claim that United Airlines flight attendants are being forced to sleep on cots in the airport amidst disruptions. But the photo she shares doesn’t appear to support that allegation.
United Airlines has faced significant delays and cancellations, far beyond those of competitors whose operations were snarled by weather and FAA disruptions. And United has struggled to recover its operation over several days.
However this photo tweeted out of Ms. Nelson, who had been considered for head of the AFL-CIO, is clearly of passengers in the C-North terminal of Houston Bush Intercontinental.
- These are passengers in plain clothes
- There are children present
- And not a single crew bag in the picture.
This is the situation across the country @united for crews. Unacceptable! Passengers should know this means these crews are not legal to work a reassignment, which exacerbates the problem. This is NOT an ATC problem. Management needs to implement @AFAUnitedMEC demands now! pic.twitter.com/reA8d7LOaS
— Sara Nelson (@FlyingWithSara) June 28, 2023
United’s technology solutions failed, and crew have had challenges contacting the airline. There may still wind up stories of crewmembers who – unaware of their assigned lodging, or who were stranded and not proactively booking to a hotel – wound up choosing to stay at the airport rather than fending for themselves and seeking reimbursement (the airline would have failed in its duties in such a case). However this is not it.
Last summer American Airlines flight attendants were left without hotel rooms during an operational meltdown. This was more common the year before as a result of failures by American’s outsourced vendor for these arrangements. However Sara Nelson’s AFA-CWA doesn’t represent American Airlines flight attendants (although there have been moves looking to change that).
Sounds like the SWA debacle last
I hope the United workers were treated just like they treat passengers/customers. Sorry, every hotel is full. There’s nothing I can do for you. Sleep on the floor and fend for yourself.
The stranded United Airlines customers appear to be sleeping on the comfortable, complimentary cots at the Houston George Bush Intercontinental airport. However, if no crew hotels were available, the United Airlines flight crews should consider sleeping on the adjacent empty floor space to help demonstrate that management accommodated the United Airlines Union flight crews for another stimulating overnight airport pajama party at IAH.
There are reports on other sites of United crewmembers who arrived in Denver, had timed out of their legal duty hours, attempted unsuccessfully for multiple hours to contact crew scheduling, so booked hotels in Colorado Springs using their own credit cards (required reimbursement under UAL’s pilot contract) at rates of $1000 per room. The drive to/from COS chewed up multiple hours, pushing back the ability to use those crews even later in the day.
Whether Sara Nelson got the right picture or not, airline crews are as badly displaced as passengers when an airline loses operational control which is what happened to UAL.
They have already cancelled 13% of their mainline flights today (down from 23% at the end of the day yesterday but the day is far from over) or over 375 flights while no other airline has cancelled more than 2% which for B6 is 21 flights.
Am I supposed to feel bad for these employees? Kind of hard to when I spend a very uncomfortable night sleeping in a chair at EWR back in December because UA could not get their act together. These unions are negotiating record-breaking salaries, the cost of which are being passed on to the passengers. They have relaxed their work rules to the point that it’s hard to get some of them off their a@@es once in the air. Now they are whining because they are in a job where disruption occurs and they are being inconvenienced by the disruption.
All I can say is…”now you know how it feels, so suck it up, buttercups.”
so what im hearing the public wants to fly into unsafe skies and keep schedules going..not matter what the conditions are…. just doesn’t make sense…. its all safety folks,,, and prob to many flights arriving around the same time really messes stuff up
That
s why you should buy Insurance to cover expenses..
These are obviously customers. But I do agree with her, crew should be here. They should be bringing drinks and food to the stranded customers.
Go to @paymeforboarding in instagram for actual accounts from flight attendants. Seriously go read. Coming from another airline FA I have no association with the page. It’s atrocious, completely avoidable with proper staffing for crew scheduling. They’re on hold for over 10 hours trying to confirm reassignments, get hotel rooms, or get their hotel room extended as they wait days to work. Kirby is a despicable human being to blame this all on ATC and take NO accountability for completely abandoning the FAs, and thus the paying passengers stranded for days while FAs are unable to work bc of the company’s complete failure.
Sara Nelson would make a great democrat politician.
However, somebody ought to tell her that the BLM profile pic is outdated. The democrats have moved on from race grievances to lgbt grievance politics now.
@Joe_D I would need hard data to show that FAs sleeping on a cot is going to cause a mid-flight calamity.
Not my airline but this is becoming way too common for employees at the 3 legacy carriers. Greedy at the top, inept and incompetent middle management who cannot problem solve on a good day. Understaffed because no one wants the job. In the meantime, airline executives are laughing at all of us while they have “Board of Director” meetings on chartered mega yachts in the South of France. All of them are AWOL. The fares keep going up and the profits are exceeding expectations. We have turned into a Soviet Gulag. The “big boys” will never be accountable because they can pay off anyone. Mr. Kirby is a well known narcissist in this industry. He cares about no one but himself. BTW, he does not step foot on his own carrier. NetJets for him and his family. Paid for by you.
@Chad I have no idea who is Sara Nelson, but I have no doubt and need no proof she’s a democrat.
I was going to write exactly that.
@ SOBE ER DOC says:
“Am I supposed to feel bad for these employees?”
No, you’re not. You have the alternative option of a rational assessment. You should consider that if such crews are illegal to work another assignment, as claimed (FAA rules), the airline management is failing the airline, its employees, and passengers, if not managing its resources effectively (undoubtedly Tim Dunn can talk to that concept).
“Kind of hard to when I spend a very uncomfortable night sleeping in a chair at EWR back in December because UA could not get their act together.”
So sad – am I supposed to feel bad for you? Maybe it is indeed the airline management that needs to improve its performance? Was it cabin crew fault you had to sleep it rough?
“These unions are negotiating record-breaking salaries, the cost of which are being passed on to the passengers”
Every raise is record breaking by definition. The cost of labor is the cost of labor. The market decides.
I look at some of our local doctors for comparative purposes (just by way of example) and can’t fathom their arrogance and obscene salaries. One entirely misdiagnosed an immediately life threatening illness of a certain friend whilst claiming she had cancer (when she didn’t) without the appropriate diagnostics. Another failed to prescribe the appropriate meds for a condition my wife suffered a few years back and then was a total arrogant prick about our concerns about Astra Zeneca (I nearly forwarded his emails to the medical board). Those two a danger to the whole community.
Another local specialist is such a rude and arrogant sociopathic twat (who discusses patients from the viewpoint of his political bias) that several of us will refuse ever to let him treat us or our relatives. He (allegedly) caused lasting injuries to one friend and abused another who sought alternative consultation in another city.
Of course in these latter cases, the huge salaries are driven by entirely closed shop membership of so-called professional bodies.
The lack of accountability is very troubling – one med professor in SYD was eventually successfully sued for malpractice when causing a friend of mine to become a quadriplegic when mis-dosing chemo drugs – it took many years to get legal recourse by which time he was dead and she didn’t live much longer. He had continued to practice for years. She died young.
“They have relaxed their work rules to the point that it’s hard to get some of them off their a@@es once in the air.”
What do you recommend to get our incompetent medics to do their job without severely injuring or killing folk?
“Now they are whining because they are in a job where disruption occurs and they are being inconvenienced by the disruption.”
It seems that you’re the one who’s whining, dude.
All I can say is…”now you know how it feels, so suck it up, buttercups.”
It appears you can’t see the logical irony of your whinge. Hint – the FA union is attempting to hold the management to account for the very issue that you endured.
“I would need hard data to show that FAs sleeping on a cot is going to cause a mid-flight calamity.”
Well, perhaps take that up with the FAA instead of ranting at flight attendants and their union. It wouldn’t take you more than a few minutes on Google to get the gist of the basic legalities of flight time limitations.
Your comment infers a complete lack of understanding / resect for the highly evolved and extensively researched practice of aviation safety, including the psychology of human factors – it doesn’t work like the correlation heavy superficiality of much medical science….;)
How do ever assemble enough data to characterise the statistical likelihood of extremely rare events that nonetheless occur (think side effects to aAstra Zeneca or Black Swan events in economics) – you are managing stuff outside the bell curve.
I witnessed a “distracted” cabin crew member almost mess up very badly on my last international flight – one of the pilots had to leave the flight deck to intervene.
The goal is to lessen the probability of incidents at source, such as the causes of fatigue and distraction.
Sara Nelson is absolute vomit. The only person worse than her is Randi Weingarten.
Well, I can’t speak for United, but at the airline I work for, we are not on our layover until we get behind the door of a hotel room…so, yea, sleeping on a cot is fine, but it’s not a layover until we have 8 full hours at a hotel room. We use an emergency service that charges the airline directly, not a reimbursement service.
Sara is mistaken. Pictured are customers at IAH Terminal C, not crew. They did the same thing for stranded United customers at IAH earlier this year too, and sadly there are a lot of random people out there who’ve been through it and would recognize where that photo was taken anywhere now.
Nothing good comes from doing bad. When a Major Airline (United) has no appreciation for the the Regional Airline carriers and conspired to shut them down due to greed, as it did Express Jet (formerly Continental Express and misuse government funds of 29 billion to pocket and use for purchases of super sonic jets for future use, karma will prevail. The funds from the Cares Act due to COVID was to secure flight crews their jobs instead of shutting it completely down and contracting a smaller carrier. And Express Jet Flight Attendants didn’t receive one red cent in servant money for their dedicated years of ensuring breaking records in on time departures. Not sure what pilots or other below the wing employees received, but we the Flight Attendants were dogged out. And our life time flight benefits agreement with United was altered and breached as well to taking our earned life time flight benefits away. United deserves whatever comes their way. Sadly for the Flight Attendants that has to endure the consequences of United’s deserved karma.
As I stand to correct my comment concerning United’s karma on nothing good comes from doing bad. I’m correcting the amount United received, it was 5 billion and Express Jet received 29 million of the Cares Act , H.R. 748 (116) funding Congress passed to protect flight crews jobs from mass furloughs. With this being said, they are dealing with karma thru all the cancellations due to poor management. Yes Congress wants to know where the money went. And yes I say it was used on the Boom Overture Jets which they were the first Airline to place an order for shortly after COVID. Go figure. So now passengers are being put out from the karma due to their bad doings as flight crews are being scrutinized and ATC is being the blame. Tell me karma isn’t surreal.
To the editor: If my stand to be corrected post will not be posted, please remove the one with the error in question that I may retype it.
Thank you.
Flight attendants do not have regular luggage. The past week was tough for the passengers and for the employees. The CSR’s did the very best with what they were given. At least they showed up for work considering the way they were treated by passengers and the company.