One of the longest open labor negotiations in the US has been between United and its flight attendants. It’s been going on for so long that even American seems to be (incorrectly) seizing on this as an excuse for United’s ongoing superior financial performance. It now appears that this lengthy negotiation is finally getting close to a resolution, if I’m reading the tea leaves right. Even the union says there could be an agreement this month.
Airline labor contracts in the US are unique. Unlike in most industries, airline contracts don’t expire; they simply become amendable. This allows labor negotiations to go on for ages, and as consolidation has created larger airlines that are more critical to the economy, labor groups have become all-but-prevented from striking.
We have largely been in a pattern-bargaining world lately where each new contract financially matches what the other big airlines provide with some incremental improvements. The airlines then all take turns topping the last agreement… until there’s some massive downturn where it all gets clawed back in bankruptcy. (At least, that’s been the historical pattern which we can all hope will eventually end.)
United’s flight attendants — represented by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) — have had an amendable contract since 2021, so we are hitting the five-year mark which is longer than most new contracts last. What has taken so long? As always, it’s complicated.
A Slow Start by Design
The early days, of course, were not ideal for the union to come to an agreement because the airlines were financially vulnerable in the COVID world. The AFA presented its opening proposal in October 2021, but it was in their best interest to wait awhile until profits returned to get serious about negotiating anyway.
When things did improve, the union didn’t want United to go first. The AFA actually lent its lead negotiator Joe Burns to American’s flight attendant union, the APFA, as its lead negotiator in their talks. This makes a whole lot of sense if you want American to agree to a deal first so that you can then swoop in with something better at United, but it also does slow things down for your own membership.
Two months after American flight attendants ratified their agreement in September 2024, the United flight attendants replaced their negotiating committee… and finally brought Joe Burns back into the fold. With that reset, it sounded like real negotiations could actually begin. Things started to move quickly.
It was only about six months later in May 2025 when a tentative agreement was announced. Unfortunately, the union misjudged what membership wanted, and what is now called TA1 was shot down in July. That meant going back to the table once again, but first, the union had to figure out where it screwed up. It sent out a survey to members, and then it went back to the airline.
United for its part seems to be hanging its hat on the idea that it gave as much economically as it could, and any additional concessions will require the union giving in elsewhere. In fact, United put out a note to flight attendants late last week which suggested that eliminating Personal Time Off (PTO) would help pay for other improvements. Apparently other airlines don’t have this, which is separate from vacation time. But this is the kind of haggling that’s going on.
I can’t imagine that United is going to hold strictly to this idea that there can be no change in the economica value, regardless of the rhetoric that gets put out there. There has to be wiggle room in any negotiation, but undoubtedly it won’t be as much as the union asks for, and that’s where we find ourselves today… waiting for that middle ground to be found.
The Issues At Hand
So what are the issues? It’s not completely clear since the union did not respond to my request for comment, but there are some clear areas of improvement that are needed to get the membership onboard.
Hugely important from what I see is the discussion around so-called “sit rigs.” Flight attendants get paid for the time worked when the door is closed on the airplane (and boarding pay will presumably be added in this round since other airlines have done that). But this means that if a trip is built with long layovers, the flight attendants — through no fault of their own — have to sit around and not get paid in between flights. There are multiple ways to deal with this, but I believe what we’ll end up seeing is that scheduled sits over a certain period of time (couple hours, maybe?) will receive some sort of pay. I believe the pilots already have that in their agreement, and it seems entirely reasonable to me.
But as United noted in an update it sent internally on Feb 13 that I reviewed, “there does remain a significant gap between our respective positions on how to offset the cost of the AFA’s new proposals.”
There is also a back-and-forth about the Preferential Bidding System (PBS) which many flight attendant groups already use. This replaces the union-built manual lines with a computerized system that lets flight attendants put in their preferences, and then assignments are made. The company likes this since it makes things more efficient, but it sounds like there may be a split between flight attendants where some like it and some don’t. Either way, it sounds like this isn’t going to happen this time unless the union changes its tune.
And then there’s the healthcare issue. We all know this story. Costs have spiraled, but workers want protection. Something will have to give on that. Some things from the company, like requiring a minimum number of hours worked to get healthcare, seem entirely reasonable. Others, likely less so.
Hopefully, the Home Stretch
With these issues still in play, why do I say that an agreement may come soon? Beyond the number of issues having been narrowed dramatically, there’s been a lot of noise and media attention coming out lately, and I think the heat is on to end this thing.
American seems to be playing some kind of game, pushing a narrative that United isn’t paying full labor costs so that somehow helps justify American’s financial underperformance. We saw this come out in the hollow opinion piece entitled “The skies for American Airlines are clearer than you think” which looks like the author just had American write the article and he signed his name. This is quite laughable since United not only took a $561 million charge in 2025 as a result of the previous tentative agreement, but it also includes the expected impacted of labor agreements being concluded in its 2026 guidance which is far superior to American’s.
But AFA leader Sara Nelson is also jumping on this bandwagon, comparing United CEO Scott Kirby unfavorably with American CEO Robert Isom who she portrays as a friend of labor. She piled on when American subsidiary PSA came to an agreement with its flight attendants. I imagine she thinks putting Scott Kirby against Robert Isom — a relationship with a whole lot of history dating back to American, US Airways, and even America West — will somehow get things done. Strange bedfellows….
But all of this noise is more of a distraction that just pushes in the right direction. There are two multi-day negotiating sessions scheduled in March. The internal communications have ramped up, and the union sounds uncharacteristically optimistic. In its latest Feb 16 note, it said:
We believe that, given the number of open issues and the progress we have made, we should be able to reach an agreement in March.
So now, we wait. With any luck, we can finally stop talking about this particular labor issue soon and move on to the next one.
