American Airlines faces lawsuit over flight attendant wages in Philadelphia
Flight attendants across airlines have often not been paid for work that takes place on the ground, but that's begun to change.
An American Airlines flight attendant who works out of the Philadelphia International Airport is suing the airline, alleging that flight attendants aren’t properly paid for all of their time on the job.
Flight attendants are required to arrive early at the airport and help board and deplane passengers, but these and some other parts of the travel process are not usually counted in payroll and don’t count toward overtime, according to the lawsuit.
Flight attendant Christopher John filed a complaint in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas in October and later moved to federal court in Philadelphia. John is suing on behalf of himself and other flight attendants for American Airlines based out of PHL as far back as October 2022, the complaint said.
The airline “generally does not credit or pay” flight attendants for the hour or two prior to a flight’s departure time, time spent boarding passengers before a flight and deplaning them upon arrival, or time spent traveling on a shuttle to and from hotels on stopover flights.
All of these activities “fall squarely within their day-to-day job duties,” the complaint reads.
American Airlines has argued that the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act — which establishes a minimum wage and overtime rate in the state — does not apply to this case because the flight attendants have a union contract that outlines pay practices.
American Airlines said in a motion to dismiss the case that the state law “expressly exempts ‘employe[es] of an air carrier’ from its overtime requirements if their ‘hours of work, wages, and overtime compensation’ are governed by a collective bargaining agreement.”
American Airlines flight attendants are represented by the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. A recent union contract for those employees started in September 2024 and ends in September 2029. As of last year, the union represented some 28,000 American Airlines flight attendants.
The attorney for the flight attendant, Peter Winebrake, declined to comment on the case. Lawyers for American Airlines at O’Melveny & Myers did not immediately provide a comment.
How are flight attendants compensated?
Typically, flight attendants — regardless of their airline — have not been paid for time before the plane closes its doors, such as when boarding travelers. (Airlines have argued that the time spent on the ground is compensated because of the pay structure that promises a minimum of one hour paid flight time for every two hours of duty.)
But that’s beginning to change at some airlines.
Last year, American Airlines flight attendants secured a contract including pay for time spent boarding passengers, and Delta started partially compensating employees for this time in 2022.
In August, Air Canada flight attendants went on strike for three days amid contract negotiations in which they sought to secure pay for time spent working on the ground before a plane takes off or after it lands. Flight attendants rejected a tentative agreement in September, with a union leader saying the airline did not bargain in good faith on wages.
In the U.S., flight attendants must get permission from the federal government in order to strike.
American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, is the largest carrier at PHL, carrying nearly 20 million passengers through the airport in 2024.
The airline is the ninth largest employer in Philadelphia County, according to the state’s Department of Labor and Industry. The median pay of flight attendants in the U.S. was $67,130 last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
American Airlines employs over 10,000 people in the Philadelphia area, including 2,567 flight attendants, according to the company’s website.
Staff reporter Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.