Flight attendants trading trips and giving away their scheduled flights can be a lucrative business. View from the Wing wrote how American Airlines Flight Attendants Rent Out Their Seniority for $200, however it turns out that American Airlines isn’t the only airline where this is going on.

Similar to American Airlines, Southwest Airlines is also an airline whose flight attendants are union, which is why this practice is essentially allowed. Delta on the other hand, a non-union airline, does not allow trips to be sold to other flight attendants.

Southwest Airlines also has a trip trading system in place, where flight attendants can choose to get rid of their trips by offering monetary incentives for another flight attendant to pick it up. Similar to American, you may see $200 on a trip for someone to get rid of, however it can go up to even $500!

One flight attendant is trying to get rid of their trip that they were assigned and don’t wish to fly by offering “$500 paypal or check” for another flight attendant to pick it up and work their trip.

What does a $500 trip look like? See below, which is a 3 day Dallas base trip. As a reminder, this is in addition to whoever picks up the trip who will receive their normal trip pay from the airline, which can be over $60 an hour, so as you can see it can be quite lucrative to try to pick up trips from other flight attendants.

When asked if this practice was common for pilots, we were told that it’s only flight attendants who are paying other co-workers to work their trips and that there is no such program in place for pilots.

Is anyone else surprised how much flight attendants are willing to pay other flight attendants to not fly their trips and have someone else work them? Feel free to share your comments below.