Originally Posted by SKYEG

CSR jobs are severely underpaid across the board. It's actually pretty sad that it hasn't changed over the years. You want good customer service? pay these staff a bit more.

If you're a single income parent, $25/h would be difficult to survive comfortably nowadays. The concierge job is pretty crap for what you get paid. Dealing with issues and entitled corporate DYKWIA for that kind of pay? brutal. I'm sure some still enjoy their jobs and are proud to do it, kudos to them. Maybe concierge would be an OK job right after college while single or maybe with just a partner. Dual income no kids types. It's not a survivable wage with kids - not a career wage by any means. It's a CSR job. the flight benefits and privilege would be worthless if you can't feed your kids at home and afford to pay a mortgage. This is at $25/h. I can't even imagine trying to survive off $16/h... just insane. Execs should give up some of their crazy 7/8 figure bonuses to pay CSR's more. Yeah I'm on that team. Doesn't matter if working at tim hortons or AC, pay a better wage.

I have friends that are firefighters who do ground crew PT, EA's that are PT Gate Agents and at home CSR's. All for AC and JUST for the flight benefits. that makes way more sense as they make a livable career wage and can double dip on flight benefits with a PT job that means nothing to them. They don't think there's anything cool about what they do working for AC. Definitely don't think it's a glamorous job, they aren't proud of working for AC at all. It's just to travel free. Being unionized actually makes things worse for them but I won't even go there.

For the actually Full timers - my friends that fly AC mainline/Jazz captains, FO's and TONS of FA's constantly complain about the wages (they are also pretty underpaid, especially all junior staff) and how the "glamour" of flying has complete died off. Fun for the first few years to experience travel (if you haven't already) and hooking up with randoms in new cities but that's about it. Just becomes just a regular, low paying job. Need to be SUPER senior to make any type of decent wage, grind your life away in a union. When some of my friends started at Jazz as a pilot, they made like $45k a year lol. that's like $21/h. Had so many convos with FA's/SD's on destinations they hate flying the most because of entitled or unmannerly pax. There still are the old school career captains and FA's but for the new gen -> it's just a fun job to work a few years before settling down somewhere and getting married. Some think it's good for some clout for social media lol

Working in the airline industry sucks.