Veteran United Airlines Flight Attendant Slams ‘Lazy’ Post-Pandemic New Hires Who Lack ‘Class, Etiquette, And Professionalism’

A veteran United Airlines flight attendant has slammed colleagues hired during a rush by the Chicago-based carrier to bolster its inflight workforce as travel demand quickly bounced back from the doldrums of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling them lazy and lacking in class, etiquette, and professionalism.

The frustrated crew member made the allegations in response to a complaint from a United passenger who claimed the flight attendants on a recent flight were rowdy and yelling profanities at one another for the duration of the service.

“These are the post-covid symptoms of hiring people from the workers-release program,” the veteran flight attendant said in response to the complaint posted on the social media platform Reddit.

At the height of the pandemic, many senior flight attendant took up ‘early out’ offers from United, permanently hanging up their wings over fears that the aviation industry would never be the same again.

But when passengers started to return to the skies in their droves, airlines were left on the back foot and had to hire fresh new workers as quickly as possible to keep up with the demand.

“Standards went out the window, 100%,” the veteran crew member said of the recruitment campaigns run by many airlines, not just United, who found themselves in the same situation.

“The new hires we’ve been getting the last few years are, for the most part, unanimously hated amongst the entire workgroup,” the disgruntled crew member continued. “You can’t generalize every single one, of course, but for every good one, there are 10 awful, embarrassing godawful ones.”

“They aren’t hired for their attention to class, etiquette, professionalism, service, etc. like it once was. A scary amount of these people only have Taco Bell and McDonald’s as prior work experience on their resume.”

The flight attendant alleges that their new hire colleagues have no sense of decorum, find any passenger request an inconvenience, and “cannot manage to get through a flight without an airpod in their ear.”

“Getting paid nearly $70/hr to hand out drinks with a smile is easy f**king work. They do nothing but undermine the rest of the professionals in the workgroup.”

This kind of complaint is certainly not unique to United Airlines and rivals like Delta, who once boasted that it was easier to get into an Ivy League School than score a job as one of its flight attendants, went on massive hiring sprees in the years after 2020.

Customers and veteran flight attendants at Delta have also complained of declining standards amongst some crew members hired during this period.

Interestingly, both Delta and United ran flight attendant recruitment campaigns late last year and were reportedly far more willing to reject candidates than during the post-pandemic hiring rounds.

That being said, Delta did have to send an email to interviewees that they must wear “proper undergarments” during their assessment day. The email also instructed candidates to “maintain their personal cleanliness and hygiene” and ensure their fingernails were clean.

It’s not just US-based carriers that have faced concerns about new hire cabin crew, with some passengers also making complaints about flight attendants at famously strict Gulf-based carriers like Emirates and even Qatar Airways.

In the case of United Airlines, however, allegations of declining service standards could also be linked to a contract dispute that is rumbling on between the carrier and the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA).

After more than three years of bargaining, little progress has been made in securing an updated contract, and while it’s illegal for flight attendants to take so-called ‘self-help’ action until released to do so by the independent National Mediation Board, there’s the perception that morale has been seriously impacted by the feud.