Having worked as a waitress back in the day, I’m a pretty good tipper. I tip generously in restaurants, and I also tip my wonderful hairdresser, my excellent mail carrier (at Christmas), my Uber drivers, anyone delivering anything to my house, the guy who drives the shuttle van, hotel cleaning ladies, bellhops, and Gilbert the Town Crier who, come rain or come shine, sits in the Boston Common and announces the weather forecast and the sports results. I typically throw change in the tip jar at whatever ice cream or pizza joint I’m in, too. Having worked in one such place in the pre-tip jar era, I can sympathize with the desire that a minimum wage worker dishing out ice cream might have to eke out a bit more pay.
But not in a million, billion years would it ever have occurred to me that the flight attendant should be tipped.
It has apparently occurred differently to Frontier Airlines.
When passengers on budget carrier Frontier Airlines buy in-flight food or drinks, they'll now find a space on their payment tablet to leave a tip for the flight attendant that served them. This change was effective January 1. Previously, any tips were pooled. (Source: CNBC)
This practice is not especially common. United and American don’t let flight attendants accept tips. Southwest, not surprisingly, has a different take:
Southwest Airlines discourages tipping, but flight attendants are allowed to accept voluntary tips if the customer insists.
Does Southwest allow involuntary tips? Hmmm. But I won’t quibble here. I will say that, if I were to fly Southwest, I would consider tipping in advance if the crew members agreed that there would be no zany announcements, singalongs, or enforced camaraderie (voluntary or involuntary).
While to some extent, flight attendants are glorified servers, their chief role of the cabin crew is to do whatever they need to do in case of emergency. And although I hope never to be on a flight where those little yellow oxygen masks fall down, let alone one in which we need to follow the floor lights to the next exit to get on the slide into the frigid ocean, I want the flight attendant who’s all about passenger safety, not someone who’s sideline is hustling for tips.
And I certainly don’t want preferential treatment given to big tippers. (“Please stay in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the tip light is lit. Those who have tipped may proceed to the nearest emergency exit. Thank you for your cooperation.”)
The flight attendants union doesn’t like the idea, either. But for a different reason:
Frontier's tipping policy has been met with backlash from the Association of Flight Attendants, an organization that represents 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines, including Frontier. The organization opposed the tipping function altogether when it was introduced around three years ago, with AFA president Sara Nelson saying in a statement recently that it was an effort used to "dissuade Flight Attendants from standing together for a fair [compensation] contract — and in an effort to shift additional costs to passengers."
Some who are okay with flight attendants accepting tips – personally, I’ve never had a flight attendant who did anything special enough to warrant tipping, but I can imagine cranky baby, dirty diaper, heavy roller bag, and not feeling well situations that might call for a gratuity – but still don’t like the idea of having a tablet shoved in front of them requesting a tip for the cheese and cracker box or the double Baileys you just ordered. (Double Baileys comes to mind because the fellow who sat next to me on a recent 5:45 a.m. flight ordered a couple of Baileys for his coffee.)
There’s a very wide spectrum of flight attendant pay.
In 2017, flight attendants made a median pay of $50,500 per year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the BLS notes that the lowest 10 percent earned less than $26,680 while the highest 10 percent earned more than $79,520.
And if you’re one of the 10 percent working for $26K – which I suspect includes some of the Frontier Airlines (budget carrier) flight attendants – even a few extra bucks a day might be welcome.
Still, I don’t like the idea of tipping the flight attendants because it minimizes the value of the safety-related professional work that flight attendants may be called on to perform.
Not to mention the galling aspect of being asked to tip on something – the cheese and cracker box – that was once given out – get this! – free. I think that the first bottle of lousy screw top wine was free, too.
Bad enough being nickeled and dimed all over the place – and did I read correctly that a third checked bag on American flies for $190? – let alone being asked to tip on it.
Anyway, when flying, I do occasionally find myself trapped in a near starvation situation and buy the damned snack box. But mostly I buy something before boarding if it’s a long flight with no food service. Don’t want to get my peckish on. And mostly I stick with water or juice so I can stay hydrated, and tend to avoid anything – think screw top Chardonnay or cup of tea – that will require an additional trip to the toilet. (Now that I think of it, if there was a flight attendant assigned to keeping the toilet clean, I might well offer up a tip…)
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