The Fight To Save More Jobs In the Airline Industry

Three weeks ago, Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A., received a call from a veteran flight attendant who has been working for twenty-five years and who has continued to work during the coronavirus pandemic. “He loves flying, he loves his career,” Nelson told me recently. During a flight to Los Angeles, the flight attendant told her, he’d had a panic attack triggered by the possibility that he might contract the virus and become severely ill. During the layover, he went to his hotel room and sheltered in place. He was too scared to leave his room and couldn’t go out to get food. Room service seemed potentially dangerous, and there was no access to a microwave in the hotel, which meant that he had no place to heat the soup he had in his bag. He ended up terrified, isolated and alone, eating the soup cold, straight out of the can.