Flight attendants hand out refreshments to a packed Delta Airways flight touring from Ronald Regan Nationwide Airport to MinneapolisSaint Paul Worldwide Airport on Friday, Could 21, 2021.
Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Instances | Getty Photographs
Delta Air Strains on Thursday mentioned it might give most of its 75,000 staff a 4% pay elevate, their first enhance because the fall of 2019, earlier than the pandemic.
Airways had been among the many hardest-hit throughout Covid as journey demand dried up, spurring file losses in any respect the key carriers. However bookings are again on the upswing, notably for home leisure journey.
Now carriers are scrambling to rent and prepare employees to match surging journey demand. Airways like Southwest Airways and United Airways have raised minimal pay or provided hiring bonuses to draw staff in a good labor market and amid excessive inflation.
A Delta spokesman mentioned the will increase are a part of common, base-pay raises the corporate provided staff earlier than Covid hit.
Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian mentioned the airline nonetheless expects an total loss within the first quarter due to omicron’s influence on staffing and journey early this 12 months. The corporate expects a revenue for the month of March.
“We have come a great distance because the darkest days of 2020,” Bastian mentioned in an worker memo asserting the pay will increase. He mentioned the airline is “optimistic” that it will possibly generate a revenue this 12 months.
The Affiliation of Flight Attendants-CWA final week wrote to Delta cabin crew members noting they have not obtained a pay enhance since 2019. The flight attendants’ union is in the midst of a membership drive at Delta that it launched in November 2019.
Delta’s roughly 20,000 flight attendants are the most important non-union cabin crew of any U.S. airline.
The union mentioned “just about each different U.S. Flight Attendant is aware of what to rely on as detailed of their contract. As a substitute, we’re ready and questioning, wishing and hoping that administration, and administration alone, will get up sooner or later and determine to present raises.”
Delta mentioned in a press release to CNBC the pay enhance was not associated to the flight attendant union drive.
“Delta has a protracted observe file of caring for our folks, and because the CEO mentioned, it is a well-deserved base pay enhance for our individuals who proceed to excel at safely caring for our clients with a journey expertise that units us aside,” an airline spokesman mentioned.
The pay enhance doesn’t apply to Delta pilots.
