Alaska Airlines offers flight attendants with double pay for summer work

At least one airline is already reverting to tactics used for the winter holidays in 2021 to help offset potential staffing shortages, in what promises to be an extraordinary summer travel season.

Alaska Airlines is offering to double the salary of flight attendants willing to work extra trips this spring and summer, according to CNBC, hoping to offset any drop in staffing, which plagued virtually every airline last year.

The airlines offered buyouts and early retirement to numerous employees in 2020 and 2021 to help counter the worst crisis in aviation history when the pandemic brought flying to a virtual standstill for months.

But they were caught flat-footed by a pent-up demand for travel in the summer of 2021, and the inability to have the proper amount of staff in place – or to move them to the proper destinations – resulted in embarrassing delays and cancellations. Thus they began offering workers double, and in some cases, triple pay to work the holidays to avoid the same fate.

“Like many other airlines, we are facing general staffing challenges,” Alaska said in a statement provided to CNBC. “In response, we’re offering flight attendants pay incentives to fill gaps in staffing for a short period of time this Spring.”

Alaska has hired 165 new flight attendants with plans to hire 700 more by June, CNBC said.

It’s likely that at least some other domestic carriers will follow Alaska’s lead, especially if they felt that the scenario worked well for them last November and December – and particularly given the anticipated volume of fliers this coming summer.

A precedent was set earlier this week when the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recorded the single biggest day of passengers at U.S. airports since the pandemic was declared on March 11, 2020. Fueled by spring break travelers, more than 2.36 million people passed through security.