United Airlines Threatens To Fire Flight Attendants Who Try To Profit Off Delays

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: September 5, 2026

41 comments

United Airlines is threatening to fire its flight attendants who try to profit off of extended flight delays, by triggering pay protection, as flagged by PYOK. While this of course doesn’t directly impact passengers, I find this to be sort of fascinating, and I’m curious just how widespread of an issue this is…

In this post:

United warns flight attendants about “gaming” delays

United has reportedly sent a memo to its 28,000+ flight attendants, warning them of an “impermissible and fraudulent” practice that the company has been noticing, which could trigger termination.

For a bit of background, let me explain the concept of this. Flight attendants have minimum rest periods between flights and trips, which are determined based on both federal regulations and contractual negotiations.

If a flight attendant is working a trip that ends up being seriously delayed, and that prevents them from working the next trip they bid on, they have pay protection. The idea is that they still get paid for that trip, even though they’re not able to work it, because them missing that trip is outside of their control.

But it would appear that some flight attendants have gotten a bit sneaky and entrepreneurial on this front. As we all know, sometimes there are rolling delays, where the departure time keeps getting pushed back. This can be due to air traffic control restrictions, maintenance issues, waiting on a pilot, etc.

United management is essentially accusing some flight attendants of bidding on future trips during rolling delays, with the idea being that they’re doing so without the intent of actually working them, based on an anticipated delay. Per United’s internal memo:

“As United employees, we often have information about delays or cancellations available to us before our systems are updated and before that information is available to our customers. Using that information for a financial benefit is an impermissible trade practice.”

“You must have the intent and ability to operate the trip being picked up or traded into. This principle has been affirmed in multiple arbitration cases. Violating it can result in discipline or termination.”

If that sounds confusing, let me give an example. Say a flight attendant has a minimum rest period of 12 hours between trips. Say they’re working a flight to their base and are finishing their trip, but there’s a rolling maintenance delay.

The idea is that a flight attendant then picks up a trip 12.5 hours after they’re anticipated to return to base, and as long as there’s an additional 30 minute delay, they wouldn’t be allowed to work that trip, but would still get paid for it.

United Airlines first class cabin seats on a Boeing 737 MAX — Flight attendants are being warned about bidding on trips

I’m curious how common of an issue this is

Hey, from United’s perspective, this memo is fair enough. Obviously the airline doesn’t want people intentionally bidding on trips that they won’t be able to work, with the sole intent of triggering the pay protection clause in their contract. Now, two things come to mind…

First, I’m curious just how widespread of an issue this is. I mean, you sort of need the perfect storm of a situation (in terms of intent, the flow of a delay, the available trips to pick up, etc.) for this to work. You’d assume this isn’t at all common, but who knows.

Second, United is great with tech, and frankly I’m surprised the airline isn’t able to update its system to prevent this kind of stuff. You’d think United’s internal system would have most of the information about rolling delays, and that could be used to prevent trading onto trips that are at risk of not working out.

United Airlines Polaris business class seats on a Boeing 777 — You’d think United could use tech to counteract this

Bottom line

United is accusing some flight attendants of engaging in “impermissible and fraudulent” practices during rolling delays. The idea is that flight attendants bid on trips during delays, with the goal of a rolling delay causing them to not be able to work that trip, while still triggering pay protection.

I can understand why the company would take issue with this practice, and try to prevent this. I’m just a bit surprised that this is at all a common practice, since it requires the “perfect storm” of circumstances.

What do you make of this alleged United flight attendant scheme?

More discussion »

Support OMAAT

Conversations (41)

The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

Comment as a member

Membership is free and takes no more information than commenting as a guest. Earn status points for good contributions, and see fewer ads as your status grows.

Loading comments…

Recent Comments

The latest from the OMAAT community.

Mike Guest

September 8, 2026, 3:54 am

As someone among an insane amount of people who have been delayed over and over again while sitting in a plane for hours and hours connecting around New York, there is no way, no way flight attendants aren’t cashing in but the kicker is that the pilots are in on the this too in some way. Red flags are all over this behavior whether it’s ATC or a cloud in the sky, It wouldn’t take much to work this to one’s advantage.

‼ 0

Anonymous Guest

September 6, 2026, 1:32 pm

Who else benefits from delayed flights for their own ‘pay protection’? I see both sides of the issue here and I strongly oppose flight attendants from engaging in fraudulent practices; however, United knows by their own system and plane tracking well in advance when a flight is going to be delayed. Instead of posting that delay, customers are misled their flights will go out on time to keep them loyal customers. When this potential delay happens earlier in the day, customers believe they will make their connections when it’s far from the truth. While company has been transparent with the delay and cancelation reasons in the United app, there is a strong motivation on their part to withhold delaying a flight to mislead its own customers from its timeliness. You can’t fault one side when what is going on is seemingly intentionally done to give false hope on on-time operations.

‼ 0

Just sayin Guest

September 5, 2026, 7:56 pm

If United were a reliable airline then they wouldn’t be having this problem.

‼ 1

Catch me if you can Guest

September 5, 2026, 6:34 pm

United flight attendant here! I always schedule myself in advance with minimum rest times and about 4-5 times a month I go illegal for a trip, get pay protected and released, but I do it the legal way, always days in advance, because I know how disastrous our operations are.

‼ 1

Upset Frequent Flier Guest

September 5, 2026, 6:13 pm

United’s management can go double F themselves. Most of the delays are caused by their poorly trained operations team, greediness and overall incompetence from management. So if their flight crews want to take advantage of their incompetence, why not?! If you check their app, you can see that 99% of their flight departures have no room for error, for example a flight departing to Miami at 1 pm, if you click on “where’s the airplane coming from” you’ll see the airplane is arriving at 12:15 pm (“early or on time”) so their genius operations team thinks that deplaning, cleaning, catering and re-boarding can be done in 45 minutes, sometimes when airplanes arrive from international destinations it takes even longer because it has to go through customs formalities. Many times you have to wrestle with the cleaning personnel because they’re rushed to start cleaning while passengers are deplaning which is not only low class but inconvenient for passengers. Seats are left with tons of food residue and I always find trash in the seat back pockets. United is chewing more than it can swallow because they’re greedy, they’re incompetent, they lack common sense, and the only reason they’re still in business is because there’s no competition. My suggestion to United is that they should stop bothering their employees instead they should focus on running common sense operations, stop being greedy by operating more flights than you can actually handle and give your airplanes proper maintenance because this year alone I had to switch airplanes 5 times due to maintenance problems and on at least 4 flights one of the lavatories was out of service.

‼ 1