Of all the odd statistics I’ve picked up writing about big airlines and smaller businesses, one of my favorites is the one about Delta Air Lines and its flight attendants.
It’s exactly the kind of thing I write about in my free book, Flying Business Class, which you can download here, and it goes like this:
If you crunch the numbers the right way, you can make an argument that it’s statistically harder to become a Delta Air Lines flight attendant than it is to gain admission to Harvard University.
Take 2017, for example, when according to Delta’s numbers, more than 270,000 people applied for roughly 1,700 open Delta flight attendant jobs, which works out to about a 0.62 percent success rate.
That year, Harvard had a 5.2 percent acceptance rate. (It’s now down to 3.4 percent at Harvard.)
Last week, just in time for Labor Day, Delta Air Lines announced plans to hire 1,500 new flight attendants, along with an additional 1,500 flight attendants who made it through the hiring process before the pandemic began in early 2020, but who weren’t able to start work due to the crisis.
All of this comes not a moment too soon for the people who are currently employed as Delta Air Lines flight attendants, and it’s safe to say they’ll be very happy about the announcement.
Roughly 4,000 of their fellow flight attendants took early retirement or other separation options during the pandemic, and the strain on those who stayed has gotten more difficult.
Now, Delta isn’t alone in its hiring plans. United Airlines recently announced it’s going to hire more flight attendants after its pandemic pause, as the cabin crew recruitment site Paddle Your Own Kanoo reported, American Airlines is looking to hire 800 flight attendants, while JetBlue wants to hire 2,500 new flight attendants.
On top of that, Southwest Airlines increased its recruiting and also recently announced it’s going to reduce its schedule after its flight attendants wrote that they felt “weary, exhausted, frustrated,…