In an effort to explain to those non-flight attendants and airline folks how each aircraft gets a full compliment of crew members, and generally speaking; what goes into being a flight attendant, I’m going to continue to add chapters to my “A Day in the Life” series. I think this could also help you understand some of the posts I make in the blog and help bring everything together to make some sense.

You may hear me mention from time to time that I’m leaving on another “trip” or that I’m on a “4 day trip” and I’m not saying that because I’m going on vacation or because thats the easy way of me saying I’m “going to work.” A trip is a collection of flights that a flight crew member will be operating over the course of one day to four days and sometimes even longer than that. The word “trip” can be substituted for the word “pairing,” “ID,” or “sectors” depending on the airline or country in which you work.

Trips can change monthly. The trips are built by the Crew Planning department after they receive a list of flights that the airline intends to operate for the next month from either Route Planning or Marketing. Flight times and flight schedules can change monthly, therefore impacting what kind of trips can be built.

Most domestic carriers build trips ranging from 1-4 days, and in some cases have 5 day trips. Depending on the flight attendant’s work rules or union contract regarding duty and flight time, some trips may contain a transcontinental turn (example LAX-JFK-LAX) allowing the flight attendant to fly 11 hours in one day. Most senior flight attendants like these one day trips because it allows them to be home at night, like a normal job would but allowing them to retain the scheduling flexibility that comes with being a flight attendant.

Commuters, like myself, enjoy 3 and 4 day trips. This way, I only encounter the annoyance of flying to work once a week.

Here’s an example of what a trip can look like:

Above is an example of the flights I might work in a 4 day period. Now, I’m going to break down a trip and tell you about some aspects of them, that you might not know.  Let’s take a look at the last flight on day 3, and the first flight on day 4.

You’ll see that if you were work flight 682, you’d land in New York at 10:29pm and you would stop getting paid at that moment. Figure it takes 15 minutes for everyone to deplane and 30 minutes for you to get to your hotel. Now, its 11:14pm. You’re report time the next morning, at the airport, is 10:30am. Which means, you have to leave the hotel at 10am, so you’re up getting ready at 9:00am or 8:45am.  You can now see that though the layover says you’re getting “11 hours 46 minutes rest” you’re really not. If you were to actually fall asleep the second you get to your hotel room, which would never happen, you’d be asleep for roughly 9 hours and 30 minutes. Realistically, by the time you take a shower (20 minutes), eat something (20 minutes), relax in bed to fall asleep (20 minutes) you’re now down to 8 hours and 30 minutes of sleep. Mind you, this is factoring in that you don’t wait 30 minutes at the airport for the van, your rooms at the hotel are ready, you have food with you to eat (and you don’t have to wait for room service or delivery), and most of all, you weren’t delayed arriving into JFK. Your rest isn’t extended if your late, unless it goes below 8 hours.

Another way trips can be built, which really messes with me, is with day sleeps.

You’ll see with this trip, that you leave San Francisco at 11:15pm and arrive in Dulles, VA at 5:45am the following day. You ‘rest’ for 13 hours and 10 minutes. Then, later that same day, you work a night flight to Los Angeles at 8:10pm. Some flight attendants prefer to sleep during the day after working all night, then again, working a night flight. So, some trips may be built this way.

For those days where you do “turns,” or a lot of short flights in and out of a particular city or cities, some trips come jam packed with “sit time” or “ground time.”

This is one of those things I can’t stand when it comes to being a flight attendant. “Sit time,” sometimes known as “airport appreciation time” is time you spend in an airport, not getting paid your normal, hourly rate, but yet — on duty, waiting to work your next flight. In the example above you land in San Francisco at 9:50am from Los Angeles, but you don’t leave for Las Vegas until 2 hours and 20 minutes AFTER you arrive from Los Angeles. This is usually when your momentum of ‘working’ and ‘being at work’ fades because you literally have nothing to do, and aren’t getting paid, until you close the door for your next flight.

Trips can come in all shapes, sizes, lengths, long days, short days, 1 days, etc. It’s a matter of personal preference as to what makes a “good” trip.. but generally speaking long sit times, working 4 or more flights a day coupled with a short layover seem to create a “bad” trip.

For those of you who aren’t in the airline industry, please take note (though not an excuse for bad service and/or cranky flight attendants): as you can see with the last example showing “sit time,” if you’re booked on the LAS-JFK flight at 2:35pm, as you can see, they’ve been working since their report time of 7:25am, which means they had to be on the way to the airport at 7am, and awake since 6am. By the time they are getting to you, to work a 4.5 hour flight, they’ve already been awake/working for 8 hours and 30 minutes trying their best to stay on time and dealing with everyday, normal, passenger issues. Trust me, they want to get to New York just as much as you do.. in fact, probably more than you do, so they can sleep!