Airline Sends $1300 Invoice To Former Flight Attendant Who Quit Because She Wasn’t Making Enough Money
The invoice, allegedly from United Airlines, comes amid a revolt from United flight attendants who've been working without a contract for four years.
Digital Vision | Photo Images | Canva Pro For the way they get treated, you'd think flight attendants get paid big bucks. But the harsh reality is the opposite, and at least for some airlines, things seem to be getting steadily worse instead of better. The case of a flight attendant who said her airline demanded she reimburse them for training after she resigned is a perfect example of how absurd the airline industry has become for its workers.
The flight attendant claimed United Airlines invoiced her for $1300 after she quit.
It's important to note that the flight attendant's claim could not be verified, and she has since deleted her Reddit post about the matter. Three other Redditors claiming to be United flight attendants said they, too, received a similar invoice, however.
In her post, the former flight attendant wrote that they quit the job three months in "due to [the] unforeseen financial stress of the role." That is, the notoriously low pay for new flight attendants, which in some cases is as low as $17 per hour.
United is said to pay much more than that, but flight attendants are only paid for the time the plane is taxiing and actually in the air. That's why it's become so common to sit on the tarmac for hours during delays rather than deplane. To do so would force the flight crew to work hours and hours for free.
For this flight attendant, the financial reality of making so little money became untenable, so she left. But now, "here I am trying to get back on my feet, still unemployed 6 months later, and I get an invoice in the mail from United saying I owe ~$1300."
The invoice was for training costs that many airlines make flight attendants pay back.
Why on Earth would an employer invoice an employee for quitting? Well, it comes down to one of the several uniquely bizarre realities of the airline industry. There is no paid training, like most jobs. Training, which at some carriers can be extensive, has to be paid back.
Depending on the airlines, these fees can be for everything from uniforms to instruction time, but in many cases, a new flight attendant is expected to pay them off from their wages. They basically start their job in debt to their employer.
One flight attendant on Reddit, for example, said they are more than 18 months into their United job and still paying off their fees, in part because they have occasionally gone entire months without there being any work.
When a flight attendant quits, this "debt" doesn't just disappear along with their job. They are expected to pay it all back, hence the invoice. The flight attendant, as well as other commenters claiming to be in similar positions, said they were given just two weeks to pay the $1300 back or they would be sent to collections.
So not only are they being squeezed for what is to most working people a huge sum of money, but they are also in danger of having their credit ruined, all for quitting a job because they couldn't afford to keep it. "It "feels so slimy for a multibillion-dollar company to nickel and dime poor people like this," the flight attendant wrote in their post.
United flight attendants are working without a contract and are facing retaliation for protesting.
Whether these claims on Reddit are true or not, the virality of them comes at a most inopportune time for United, which has been embroiled in conflict with its flight attendants for the better part of the past four years.
At issue is, of course, pay, which for United flight attendants has not risen since 2016. Their current contract has been amendable since 2021 — meaning it has expired, and the previous terms continue until there is a new one. Flight attendants have been staging protests at airports all over the world in recent months.
The flight attendants' union, which says United is fifth in flight attendant pay despite being #2 in profits, authorized a strike in August of 2024 and has been in ongoing negotiations since then. Those negotiations do not appear to be going well. Flight attendants stormed a recent United PR event, which showed off its new Polaris international business class redesign.
The flight attendants who attended the demonstration have reportedly now been stripped of their jobs pending "investigations" into their protesting activity, which is a right protected by long-established labor law.
Meanwhile, United CEO Scott Kirby was the airline industry's highest paid CEO last year after "a 246% increase in compensation in just the last two years while leaving Flight Attendants nearly four years past due on a raise and contract," according to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, United's flight attendants' union. "Right now," the union went on to say, "he’s just beating competitors by failing to pay us — the people who make United fly.”
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
