United Airlines Gives All Employees $1,000 Bonus

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: October 13, 2021

19 comments

This is a pleasant surprise for United Airlines employees…

In this post:

United Airlines thanks employees with bonus

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has this week announced that all active employees will receive a $1,000 bonus on their paycheck next month. This is intended to thank team members for their hard work during the pandemic.

Not only is this an awesome gesture, but $1,000 will make a big difference for many people. Maybe not a huge difference for a captain making $300K per year, but for some employees this could be a couple of weeks worth of pay.

United has over 80,000 employees, so that’s a minimum of $80 million in bonus payments. I guess those airline bailout funds have to be spent somehow. 😉

United’s in a good spot right now

As I’ve written about before, I’ve been impressed by United CEO Scott Kirby. I never thought I’d say that based on his time as Doug Parker’s right-hand man at American Airlines, US Airways, and America West, but he has taken a different approach at United, and has proven himself.

In particular:

At this point United is well positioned in terms of employee vaccination, which is proving a huge issue at other airlines
In the past several months, we’ve seen operational meltdowns at American, Delta, Southwest, and Spirit, though United’s operations have been incredibly stable, despite how short staffed airlines are
We’ve seen rumblings that some employees at American and Southwest will disrupt holiday travel to protest the vaccine mandate, so for those airlines the worst may still be ahead of them when it comes to operational issues; that’s not a problem at United anymore

While I think Kirby is doing a lot of the right things, I still think United’s biggest weakness is the general service culture. There’s no consistency to service at United, and employees range from great to awful. I wonder if these gestures, along with United generally not having quite the division we’re seeing at other airlines right now, could positively impact that in the long-run.

Bottom line

United Airlines is giving all employees a $1,000 bonus, to thank them for their hard work. This is a lovely gesture, and it’s quite a contrast to the general state of relations between management and employees at other airlines. Here’s to hoping that this continues to lead to an improved service culture at United.

What do you make of United’s bonus payment to employees, and the general service culture at the airline?

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Mark Andrews Guest

March 14, 2022, 8:57 pm

United threw out my management pension as part of bankruptcy! Why don't they take care of us who already have served our careers to United?

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Dave Guest

November 13, 2021, 11:30 pm

This is not for ALL employees. Flight attendants are not included. Also now there are rules to the bonus like having to have an uploaded vaccination card on file. So flight attendants and those without an uploaded card get nothing. Go figure, let’s look better than we are with what we say.

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RAMPLIFE Guest

October 31, 2021, 12:45 pm

I’m a current United employee & yes things were rough during the pandemic & our airline did offer several packages to avoid a furlough such as VPPL, early retirement for those who qualify & Another type of leave. I personally am thankful for that type of sacrifice a lot of my fellow coworkers did to allow us junior employees to keep our jobs. Now as for the vaccine mandate yes it was very crucial not just for us as employees, but everyone to get the vaccine. I read someone blaming Biden, so let me ask if it were Trump or any other Republican president would you still be blaming the president or are you being politically biased? United worked short handed during the pandemic, we still were seeing many flights come in and out & we struggled planeside to keep these planes from either being delayed out of the gate & receiving aircrafts on arrival. For those who don’t truly understand what goes on planeside, let me give you a little short overview as to what goes on. It all starts with passengers & yes it’s true. Let’s start off with you arriving late to the airport. You may make it through TSA & to your gate on time but you bag still needs time to travel through our conveyors & if it goes to secondary inspection just keep in mind that it may be a while before your bag/bags do get inspected by & then sent back into the system until we receive them. I hear a lot of negatives from people & that goes for all airline passengers how their bag missed the flight & so on. That’s why you show up with enough time to avoid that type of mess. Now you say why don’t we wait for a bag, us a ramp service agent we have a time slot & if by 5 minutes before your departure your bag/bags aren’t off the conveyors there’s a huge possibility that they won’t make it. Every plane has a scheduled time slot to be pushed out of the gates & make it to the taxi way to the runway & that’s controlled by ground & air traffic control. Not the airline. So please keep that in mind for the future oh yes & one last thing if your bag doesn’t make it on the flight we do have a team that tries to find a different flight to place your bag on it & it will either get there before you arrive to your final destination & or a bit later. We do our best. Once again, please do your part to help out on any airline you may fly.

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Lilsin505 Guest

October 21, 2021, 12:00 pm

Will this payment be for vendors like UGE United Ground express

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Raul Guest

October 15, 2021, 6:55 pm

Yea, only if you're vaccinated. Not right I worked through almost the entire pandemic until March of this year when I took a package to leave and I'm sure I won't be included in that bonus although I worked almost the entire pandemic.

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