Wild: Delta Flight Attendant Commutes From Africa To New York For Work

If you think you have a long commute to work, well, I have a Delta flight attendant I’d like to introduce you to…

A New York-based Delta flight attendant’s crazy commute

A flight attendant named Princilla has a YouTube channel about her life and career, as she’s a flight attendant at Delta (for the record, she wears her Delta uniform in the video, though just identifies herself as working for a major airline).

Anyway, she uploaded a 15-minute video about how she lives in Accra, Ghana (ACC), but is based in New York (JFK), and she has been commuting for around a month. You can find the video here (unfortunately it’s blocked from being embedded).

Flight attendants can absolutely live somewhere different than where they’re based, and they can even commute on a space available basis for very little money. It’s fascinating to see how her commute works, though, as she explains it in great detail.

For what it’s worth, Princilla was initially based in Seattle, which is also where she lived at the time. But she recently made the decision to move back to Ghana, and at the same time, transferred bases to New York.

For one, she’s still very junior, so she has little control over her schedule, and often ends up on reserve (in other words, she’s assigned a trip when there are irregular operations, or when other flight attendants call in sick). In these situations, she’s on reserve for six straight days, and needs to be in New York, at her base.

Delta’s policy is that commuting flight attendants need to leave enough of a buffer with their commute so that there are two flights that would get them to their base in time to report, meaning she typically has to commute from Accra to New York two days before she’s on duty.

In terms of the cost of this, she estimates that she spends close to $1,100-1,200 per month related to commuting expenses:

• When she non-revs between Accra and New York, she has to pay over $250 in taxes and fees; those are all government fees, and most of those are charged by Ghana and not the United States
• Initially her plan was to commute four times per month, but she has so far been commuting twice per month, which makes this a bit easier
• She then has a “crash pad” in New York (essentially an apartment shared with a bunch of flight attendants, who all use it only a little), where she spends at most six days per month, and that costs $375 per month
• She then spends around $250 per month on transportation to and from her crash pad

Admittedly the cost of living is lower in Accra than in New York, so I imagine that balances out with some savings as well.

I do have to say, aspects of her narrative seem a bit much to me. For example, she wishes that her airline “at least” had positive space commuting, even if it’s just once per month. For those not familiar, “positive space” would mean that she’s offered a guaranteed seat on her commuting flight, rather than being on standby, subject to availability.

Her argument is that airlines advertise that you can live anywhere in the world, and yet she feels like they have to “jump through hoops and struggle” to actually commute. Well, I mean, that’s one of the trade-offs. You want Delta to forgo revenue and not sell a seat, so that someone who chooses to live elsewhere can commute? That strikes me as being bad for business.

She also hopes that the fees she has to pay for flights are revised down or eliminated altogether, because she points out that domestic commuting costs nothing. I mean, I get it, but these are literally the government taxes and fees related to immigration, airport expenses, etc. There’s no margin for the airline on that. If you book a Delta SkyMiles award on the same route, you’d pay $268 roundtrip, in addition to the taxes and fees.

How uncommon is this long of a commute?

The concept of airline employees (pilots and flight attendants) commuting between continents is rare, but definitely not unheard of. I know of some pilots at major US airlines who live in Europe, Asia, and even Australia, who commute to their bases in the mainland United States.

The thing is, this flight attendant has several disadvantages compared to some of the other commuters I know:

• She doesn’t have much seniority, so she has limited control over her schedule; for example, if you’re a senior United captain and can always bid on the route between San Francisco and Singapore, you could work that route just three times per month and max out your hours, which is super efficient, since you’d have 20+ free days per month
• Accra is a tricky market to commute from, with just one daily flight to New York; for example, if you commute from London to New York, there are a couple of dozen nonstop flights per day you can get on, so you wouldn’t need to leave nearly as much of a buffer
• If you’re a low-seniority flight attendant, your commuting cost as a percentage of your income is quite high; close to $15K in commuting expenses per year is a lot more if you make $40-50K per year, rather than if you’re a senior captain making $400K per year

So anyway, the long haul commuting definitely isn’t unheard of, but her conditions — the exact market she commutes from, her lack of seniority, etc. — make this setup particularly brutal, as I see it. I’m curious if she maintains this in the long run, because I can only imagine the fatigue this causes.

This is also all a different kind of commute than that AirAsia employee who commutes to work daily by plane, as she lives in Penang and works in Kuala Lumpur. I don’t think there’s anyone who commutes by plane with a higher frequency than she does!

Bottom line

A junior Delta flight attendant lives in Accra, Ghana, but is based in New York, so she commutes multiple times per month for work. One of the benefits of being a flight attendant or pilot is that you can typically commute at no cost, or a very low cost, giving you a lot of lifestyle flexibility. However, commuting between continents definitely complicates things.

This Delta flight attendant has now been doing this for a month… I’m curious for how long she keeps this pattern going, because it can’t be easy on the body.

What do you make of this commuting Delta flight attendant?