Flight attendants at Alaska Airlines have ratified a new collective bargaining agreement that puts them ahead of inflation and returns the airline to its former status as top-paid in the industry. In an online vote that closed Feb. 28, the tally was 95% in favor of approving the agreement, with 91% of Alaska’s roughly 7,000 represented flight attendants participating. 

Alaska flight attendants are members of Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), a division of Communications Workers of America. 

The newly ratified agreement took effect March 3 and contains immediate pay increases that range from 18.6% to 28.3%, depending on years of experience. Parts of the increase are retroactive to December 2022, when the previous contract became “amendable.” (Under federal law, airline and railroad union contracts don’t “expire” but continue in force until they’re amended with a new agreement.) Flight attendants will get additional 3% increases in March 2026 and March 2027.

The contract also increases the company’s 401(k) match to 8.5% from 7.5% previously. And for the first time, it spells out that flight attendants will be paid for the time when passengers are boarding. Non-union Delta was the first to pay flight attendants for boarding time, followed by American and now Alaska.

Members voted down a previous tentative agreement last August. After that, Alaska improved its offer. It increased pay for boarding time and offered a 50% pay boost when flights are rescheduled. The second tentative agreement, which was approved, was referred to members with no recommendation as to how to vote.

U.S. airline and railroad workers lack leverage that other private sector workers have because the Railway Labor Act severely restricts their right to strike: A government mediator must first agree that parties have reached impasse, and then a three-member government board must decide to allow a strike; they seldom do that. Flight attendants at Alaska voted in February 2024 to authorize a strike, after waiting more than a year for a new contract, but they never got the chance to use that tool. 

Steve Maller, president of AFA’s Alaska Airlines Council 39 in Portland, said members were concerned that if they voted down the second tentative agreement, it might be a while before they got another one.

The new contract runs through March 2028. And it may be superseded by a new jointly bargained agreement that would combine Alaska Airlines flight attendants with their counterparts at Hawaiian Airlines. The two companies announced in December 2023 that they planned to merge, and the merger became official in September 2024 after it got government approval. Negotiations on a joint contract covering flight attendants are expected to start in March or April.

How are Alaska flight attendants paid?

Alaska (and Southwest) use a complicated pay formula in which flight attendants are paid by distance flown — in increments of 243 miles. Known as “Trips for Pay” the 243-mile increments are equivalent to about 1.13 hours of flight time. Under Alaska Airlines new contract with Association of Flight Attendants, pay starts at $32 per TFP (up from $24.95) and rises each year until it reaches $74.25 per TFP for a flight attendant with 14 years or more of service (up from $60.31). So that works out to between $28.32 and $65.71 an hour for the time the aircraft is in motion. The new contract now pays them for boarding time too, at 0.5 of a TFP.