Alaska Airlines flight attendants authorized a strike for the first time in more than three decades in the wake of a terrifying midair door blowout that temporarily grounded part of the carrier’s fleet.
The near-unanimous vote to strike Tuesday by thousands of Alaska Airlines flight attendants — represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA — comes after a year of negotiations failed to produce a deal.
Flight attendants and cabin crew from 24 other carriers picketed at airports across the US, UK and Guam.
US-based flight attendants are unlikely to walk off the job because of a complex labor process that makes it difficult for airline workers to strike.
However, the first Alaska strike mandate since 1993 reflects labor’s broader demands for higher pay at a time when a majority of US cabin crew are in contract talks, the Association of Flight Attendants said.
The average annual pay for a first-year flight attendant at the airline is less than $24,000, union officials have said.
Meanwhile, pilots across major airlines have secured new labor deals including bumper pay hikes and other benefits, though some flight attendants have not had a pay raise in five years, the AFA said.
Just last month, budget-friendly Southwest approved a new labor agreement that offered a roughly 50% pay raise over a five-year period to about 11,000 pilots affiliated with the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, which also pushed for better retirement benefits, disability insurance, and revised scheduling processes.
Pilots at the Dallas-based carrier will get a 29.15% pay raise immediately and a hike of 4% each in 2025, 2026, and 2027. The agreement provides for a 3.25% gain in wages in 2028.
Last year, pilots at United Airlines Holdings ratified a contract with cumulative increases in wages ranging between 34.5% and 46% over four years, as well as other benefits, following deals at American Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Hefty pilot contracts have driven up costs at airlines and have also encouraged other work groups to demand similar gains.
In December, flight attendants at Southwest voted against a five-year contract that would have made them the highest-paid cabin crew in the industry.
“After five long years of negotiations, which have included fighting both pay cuts and furloughs, enduring historic operational failures, and working without raises to combat inflation or compensate for the extensive duties our members have to perform, the flight attendants of Southwest Airlines have made it clear that this proposed contract is not going to heal the hurt,” said Lyn Montgomery, the president of the union, TWU 556.
The Post has sought comment from AFA-CWA and Alaska Airlines, which was operating the Boeing 737 MAX 9 that took off from Portland, Ore., last month and climbed to 16,000 feet before a near-disastrous fuselage blowout forced the plane to make an emergency landing.
The threat of a strike at Alaska Airlines comes after National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy issued a grave warning last week that another midair door blowout like the one that happened on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane “can happen again.”
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines are the only two US carriers that fly the MAX 9 model.
With Post wires
This story originally appeared on NYPost
