Icelandair Fires All Flight Attendants, Will Replace Them With Pilots

@Dale D I work with the FAA and they absolutely are a critical to cabin safety, as proven in numerous incidents throughout the years. Serving food and beverages is merely a pastime to keep themselves and passengers occupied. They are trained on all of the security procedures you mentioned (hijacking, belligerent passengers etc.) though most of it is unpublicized due to security protocols. Air Marshals are extremely rare, onboard about 5% of flights on average out of roughly 87,000 daily. Also, I don’t where “Salary.com” gets there information but new hire FA’s don’t earn anywhere near $76,000. Hope this helps.

I agree completely with what many have said about unions being unnecessary and detrimental to business, employment and the economy in general. Apparently people seem to have forgotten that unions are directly responsible for a number of industries being almost nonexistent here in the US, steel, electronics and appliances industries comes to mind. They've also done wonders for the automobile industry, the US Postal Service and a number of other industries and employment that struggling because of grossly overpaid union employees. I'm a retired Army MH-47 MH-47 helicopter pilot, but now doing contract work related to Aviation maintenance, I fly frequently and have flown on just about every sizable air carriers in the US. While I can say that some carriers seem to have better trained flight attendants than others, none of them, absolutely zero are critical to air travel, period! They are primarily there to board and disembark passengers, help keep order and to provide services such as beverages, meals, blankets, etc. While the are trained in certain functions related to safety, as well as emergency procedures, the salaries demanded by unions far exceed the benefits of what services they perform or might perform in an emergency. Consider this, your average flight attendant goes through approximately 3 to 6 weeks of training, aside from the obvious focus on attention to customers' needs, they usually receive training in CPR, AED, basic first aid and other emergency procedural training, primarily disembarking the aircraft once it has landed and stopped moving. The average pay for a beginning flight attendant in the US is approximately $76,670.00 dollars according to Salary.com. By contrast, a US Air Marshal undergoes approximately 25 weeks of training, including the same emergency response training flight attendants recieve, as well as responding to any number of aircraft emergencies such as hijackings, belligerent passengers, etc., situations flight attendants are usually not trained to deal with and/or are prohibited from getting involved in, including the use of deadly force. The average US Air Marshal beginning salary ranges from $46,950.00 to $54,865.00 dollars depending on experience and/or location. The idea that flight attendants are worth substantially more pay than an Air Marshals is absolutely ludicrous. Air carriers employs tens of thousands of people, many of whom are unionized and all wanting as much pay and benefits as they can possibly get. Air carriers are businesses, businesses that are not only expected to be profitable to their investors, but also to stay in business. But there's another part to this equation, consumers, most people want to travel as cheaply as possible while getting the best service for the money they spend. When people look at the money most air carriers are making at the end of the year, what they don't think about are capital expenditures, especially future expenditures. The only thing they see are dollars, consumers want cheaper airfares and unions wants more pay and benefits with little if any regards to the future of that company. While I'm sure flight attendants do a little more than just serve drinks and heard passengers, I can think of plenty of people who would gladly do the job they're doing for a lot less than what they're making... greed runs both ways!

This sort of reminds me of XJT right after 9/11 when pilots were furloughed and we could take open FA positions (we had to go through full FA training mind you). It was a real eye opener to what goes on in the cabin. They have such an important and too often thankless job. If FA’s were simply waiters/waitresses, as some illustrious commenters in these threads seem to believe, they wouldn’t even exist. The airlines would just replace them with vending machines and be done with it, but they don’t and cannot because safety is #1.

An airline I will now never fly on. I’m really surprised by their decision and reasoning. They are literally saying: we don’t believe in teamwork and equality of certain roles/tasks, so off you f&@£k.

@ivan Because in the US the rule are stupid. Thanks to the union. So much inflexibility. Instead of working towards common goal for a company, many think about themselves more. I am not a union but worked my fair share with many union. Can’t tell you how many grievances i got for doing something so trivial. I don’t mind union but people have been taking advantage of it for sure.