Flight attendants in crisis: Stripping, struggling, homeless

(NewsNation) — After a long day assisting travelers on a major airline, a flight attendant by the name of “Bree" takes off her wedding ring and begins her second shift.

“I am definitely not a girl that you would normally see in a strip club, and I come from a great family. I grew up with a lot of morals, a lot of Christian morals. I have a partner, I have a job,” Bree told NewsNation’s Natasha Zouves.

Bree spoke under the condition of anonymity, concerned about keeping her job. After years of flight attending and trying other avenues of earning additional income, like delivering for DoorDash, she says the decision to strip simply came down to “the need for survival.”

“If you tell somebody that you’re a flight attendant, they normally think you make a lot of money,” said Bree. “The public looks up to flight attendants, and it’s like you have this glamorous life.”

In reality, Bree said, “You’re dirt poor. You’re very, very poor. So poor, you become a little scrappy. You get paid under $30,000 a year.”

Bree said this new line of work has exposed her to a world that was wholly foreign to her before.

“I never saw a pimp before. I never looked at a drug dealer and knew what they did for work before. I never had people asking me for blow jobs, and they would pay $500. I would never get asked all the time if I could go home and have sex with somebody for money. This was not how I grew up. This was not my way of life,” said Bree.

She said a constant risk and worry is exposure to fentanyl at the strip club. She said the use of the synthetic opioid was so common among the clientele that she learned to recognize its distinctive scent.

“It smells like peanut butter,” said Bree. “I carry Narcan with me, just little nasal injections of Narcan, and I told my boss, ‘Just in case anything happens, if you find me on the floor — I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs — and there’s Narcan in my backpack. That’s what you should treat me with.’”

Bree is one of many flight attendants who spoke exclusively with NewsNation for this story, saying they are in crisis, struggling to make ends meet.

Kim: Living in a shed with three children

Like Bree, “Kim” also flies with a major airline. She said her passengers would have no idea she lived in a shed with her three children with no running water. One night, she said the temperature fell to minus 20 degrees. Then, the power went out.

“I had taken all my kids basically into bed with me. And I kind of, you know, used hand warmers,” said Kim. ‘“We’re just gonna have a sleepover in mommy’s bed!’ That’s what you can tell them. You can’t say anything else. That was really rough. Actually, that was probably the worst experience of my life.”

Like the other flight attendants NewsNation spoke with, Kim said she only gets paid for about half of the hours she actually works. At many airlines, there is no pay for waiting at the gate, during boarding or disembarking.

“In all reality, I’m paid less than a McDonald’s worker,” said Kim. “You do training for six weeks, and you aren’t paid for any of that. Sometimes, you work 10 1/2-hour days, and you get paid five.”

Kim said she had tried to never let the struggle show on her flights.

“People love me. When I get on the plane, I’m super nice, and no one would know anything about me unless I told them because my hair is done, my makeup is done. I have a uniform. I’m smiling, I’m interacting.”

Kim has no plans to leave the industry. She described herself as financially “trapped” due to the fact that she pulled a loan from her 401(k): “If I were to quit right now, I would have to pay all that back, and it’s money I don’t have.”

Kim has managed to provide for her children, moving them into a better living situation as she now looks for a second job on top of flight attending.

“Sometimes, I wish I didn’t wake up in the morning,” she says, but it is her children who keep her going.

Nasstasja: Eating leftover passenger meals

Nasstasja Lewis told NewsNation she will never forget receiving her first paycheck as a flight attendant for a top airline.

“My paycheck that I got was 250 bucks. And that could only buy probably one trip for me and my son at the grocery store and probably pay a bill that was lingering. So it was really, really hard. Ramen noodles were a thing,” said Lewis.

She recalled wondering, “'How am I going to survive for the next month until I get paid again?' It was really, really scary.”

Lewis said what attracted her to the job was the appearance of traveling to glamorous destinations and the promise of financial freedom. Instead, in order to prioritize her son, she has resorted at times to eating passengers’ leftover meals.

“You have to just put your pride aside and say, ‘Hey, I have to eat, or I don’t.’ It does make you feel some kind of way during those times because you’re just like, 'What am I doing here?'” said Lewis.

On top of the financial hardship, Lewis recalled an incident where she was physically shoved by a passenger. She said she made the decision not to report it.

“We’re already overwhelmed, and I just wanted to go home. It was a long trip. We had delays that day, and we were supposed to be home hours before, so I just took it and swallowed it and got home,” said Lewis.

Lewis said the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated challenges at the job. During the pandemic, the incidence of depression among cabin crew increased from 8% to 23%. Reports of stress similarly increased from 8% to 24%.

Even before the pandemic, flight attendants faced a higher rate of suicide as well as alcoholism. According to the CDC, in 2012, flight attendants were found to have a suicide rate that is 1 1/2 times higher than the general population.

Lewis said even as she posted smiling photos showing her job on social media, internally, she struggled with burnout and mental health.

“I experienced suicidal ideation during my time as a fourth, fifth-year flight attendant,” said Lewis. “Feeling like you don't want to be here anymore. Depression, anxiety, all those things are impacted within this profession, and more needs to be done about it.”

If you or someone you know needs help, resources or someone to talk to, you can find it at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website or by calling 1-800-273-8255. People are available to talk to 24/7.

Liam: Living in an apartment with 20 flight attendants

Liam Horgan is a first-year flight attendant with United Airlines and an AFA union member. He has lived on food stamps and in a “crash pad” with 20 flight attendants in the Bay Area.

“I was paying $455 a month to share a two-bedroom apartment with 20 flight attendants,” said Horgan. “The amount of things that would pile up, the amount of trash, the amount of bodies. It drops cold at night, but for it to be that cold outside and still be 80 degrees inside the bedroom because there are so many bodies and bunk beds. It was hard.”

Many new hires work “on reserve,” essentially a system of being on call. They can wait for several days for an assignment. Horgan described picking up as many hours as he could to the extent that “there were certain months that I would only be home about 3 days a month.”

Horgan added he would earn about $2,300 a month before taxes were taken out.

“I don’t think a single person who applied for this job knew what it was going to be like. Because I certainly didn’t know,” said Horgan.

Horgan said that when new flight attendants exit training, they are assigned to a base, typically in a city with a high cost of living like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, New York or Washington, D.C.

Horgan said it made an impression when management at his new base explained how he could apply for food stamps.

“I just feel like it’s kind of embarrassing that corporate greed has gotten to the point that management at these corporations are telling new hires, 'Hey, we know we don’t pay you a living wage, so here’s how you can apply for welfare,'" said Horgan. “This is a career. This is not just starting out at an entry-level job.”

Horgan said he had no concept of the extent of the mental health struggle he’d witness in his colleagues. One of the flight attendants he lived with in a crash pad attempted suicide.

“There’ve been a lot of mental health issues with a lot of flight attendants, especially new hires,” said Horgan. “I’ve felt the pressure of it myself. There have been nights that I’ve sat in bed, almost crying myself to sleep, because I’m like, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ I was working retail, and I was not struggling to make ends meet like I am right now."

Flight attendant union president: “They can’t survive”

“A week doesn’t go by that I don’t hear another heartbreaking story from a flight attendant, and it’s from every single base,” said Ken Diaz, United AFA Union president.

Diaz described hearing reports of flight attendants all over the country experiencing “bankruptcies, going through their life savings, taking loans against their 401(k)s. Some are living in their cars, credit cards to the max, marriages breaking up over financial debt. My heart breaks for them because it shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t.”

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) is the country’s largest flight attendants union.

Diaz said he has been unable to reach an agreement with United after three years of negotiations.

“They’re asking for concessions during a time when they’re making billions in profits, billions,” said Diaz. United CEO Scott Kirby made nearly $19 million in 2023.

“We got these airlines through some difficult times. Whether it be bankruptcies during the eighties to the pandemic. We helped them get the government loans that allowed them to survive, and then, they just forgot about us afterward,” said Diaz.

The median pay for flight attendants in 2023 was roughly $68,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, Diaz said that new hire pay is projected to be much lower.

“It was always tough in the past, but no one’s ever experienced the cost of living like it is today. And when you put that wage rate in today’s cost of living, it’s nothing. They can’t survive,” said Diaz.

The AFA told NewsNation first-year flight attendants can expect to make about $23,000 at Frontier; $25,000 at Alaska Airlines; $26,000 at United Airlines; $31,000 at American Airlines; and $32,000 at Delta Air Lines.

“When people see the actual wage rate, they say, ‘Oh, those are good.’ What they don’t realize is United flight attendants do not get paid until that aircraft starts moving back from the gate. So the time they check in, the safety checks, in between flights, all of that is unpaid for. You’re only paid almost for half the time that you’re at work,” said Diaz. “The morale is at the lowest point I have ever seen morale at United Airlines in the 28 years I’ve been here.”

NewsNation reached out to United Airlines, which said in a statement, "We are eager to reach the industry-leading agreement with our flight attendants that they deserve. We’re meeting with them the last week of October and again in November under the federal mediation process requested by the union. Both sides have been actively engaged in these negotiations."

Alaska Airlines provided the following: “Our goal is always to provide our flight attendants and employees with market-competitive wages and benefits. We appreciate how financially challenging the beginning of any career path can be and it’s one of the reasons we are so anxious to get a contract in place so our flight attendants can start benefiting from increased wages and improved benefits.”

Flight attendants helping one another

Thresia Raynor has been a flight attendant with Alaska Airlines for almost 17 years. She said she only realized how many of her colleagues were homeless when she’d offer to drive them home after a flight, only to find their “home” was a car on the side of the road.

“Every day at my job, I have to drop off a girl from a trip who has no car and transportation to a place of homelessness, or take her to a car where she lives, or quite often share meals with her at work because she has no food and no money for food. That’s what I experience quite often in my job,” said Raynor.

She cofounded a Facebook group called “Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants Experiencing Hunger and Homelessness” and did not expect the response.

“Overnight, it was over a thousand members,” said Raynor. “We just had no idea that there is that many people struggling. We wanted them to have a safe place to come and talk and be heard and just to scrape away all that shame and embarrassment. To have people come forward and talk about where they park their cars at night to sleep, how they go to back alleys in the back of restaurants. People sharing how they survive homeless and hungry.”

Nastassja Lewis also turned her personal experience into the nonprofit Th|AIR|apy, which focuses on flight attendant mental health. It has grown to more than 17,000 followers on Instagram. Lewis said it provides an emergency crisis line that is used every single day.

“When you’re getting messages from your peers saying, ‘Thank you for this. It’s keeping me going,’ or ‘Thank you, I really needed someone to talk to at 2:30 in the morning, and you were here for me,” said Lewis, “it lets me know the work we’re doing is really vital.”

Bree: “I don’t have a lot to show for it”

Bree said as dangerous as working at the strip club can be, there is an unfamiliar feeling — a flood of financial relief — that she hasn’t felt in her years of flight attending. She said at the strip club, she could earn roughly $300 to $1,000 a night.

“When I would take home money at the end of the night, I would sit down on the floor, and I would just count it because I need to make sure that the time I put in was worth it,” said Bree. “It feels good to finish a job in one day and be like, ‘Okay, I made rent,’ and then the next day, ‘Okay, I paid for all of our groceries.’”

Bree described herself as “resilient” and “optimistic.” She said this has also been a time of taking stock. Bree is now several years into embarking on the “dream” of flight attending.

“I’m a good employee. Any job that I’ve had, I’ve gone up the ranks quickly. I’m a hard worker. And I’m creative, I’m kind. I feel like I’ve been working so hard. And I don’t know, I don’t have a lot to show for it. I don’t even have my own car. I sold my truck to help pay for flight attending,” said Bree.

When asked if she would recommend being a flight attendant, she hesitated.

“I did not realize how little I’d be getting paid. I’ve been poor before; this was a new level of stress. People selling their eggs or becoming sperm donors, flight attendant groups recommending selling your plasma if you have a longer layover in a certain city. We are literally trying to find parts of our body that will produce money. I don’t think it should be like this in this country.”

Note: This story was updated to provide a comment from United Airlines.