United's New Flight Attendant Deal: How It Compares to American's and Delta's, and What It Costs UAL

What United agreed to

United flight attendants ratified their new five-year contract on May 12, 2026, with 82% yes on close to 90% turnout. The terms:

• 31% base raise, compounded across June and August 2026
• Boarding pay introduced for the first time at UAL — adds 7–8% to overall compensation
• $741 million in retroactive pay, a one-time 2026 charge
• Quality-of-life provisions: red-eye restrictions, sit-pay for delays over 2.5 hours, 14-hour Reserve Availability Periods (replacing 24-hour on-call), 10 weeks paid maternity leave
• Top-of-scale post-contract: above $100/hour

The deal becomes amendable around May 2031.

How that compares to American's APFA deal

APFA at American Airlines ratified its current five-year contract on September 12, 2024, with wage increases effective October 1, 2024. The terms:

• Immediate raises graduated by seniority: 18% for years 1–6, 19% for years 7–12, 20.5% for 13+
• Boarding pay introduced effective April 1, 2025 at 50% of hourly rate — the first unionized FA workforce in the US to lock it in
• $514 million one-time retro charge in Q3 2024
• Total contract value: $4.2 billion over five years (~$840 million annual run-rate)
• Top-of-scale post-deal: $82.24/hour at 13+ years, reaching above $92/hour by year five
• Years 2 through 5 escalators: 2.75%, 3%, 3%, 3.5%

So United's deal is structurally heavier on the front end than American's. The immediate raise is bigger (31% vs. 20.5%). The retro is bigger ($741 million vs. $514 million). The headline top-of-scale already exceeds where APFA lands at the end of its contract ($100+/hour vs. $92/hour). Some of that reflects United settling 20 months after American on the calendar — by the time UAL got to ratification, APFA's precedent had set the floor and the AFA-CWA had leverage that wasn't available to American's negotiators in 2024.

Delta's path didn't go through a union

Delta is the outlier. AFA-CWA failed to organize Delta flight attendants in 2010 and again in 2024. Delta has kept ahead of the labor cycle by raising pre-emptively:

• 4% in May 2022
• 5% in April 2023
• 5% in June 2024
• 4% in June 2025
• Another 4% announced in February 2026

By Delta's own accounting, cumulative investment in flight attendant compensation since 2022 totals 25% or more — that's the compounded sequence above plus base wage scale increases (Delta also raised its starting hourly rate to $19/hour in 2024).

Delta also pioneered boarding pay in June 2022 — the first major US carrier to introduce it, at 50% of the regular hourly rate.

Top-of-scale at Delta in 2026 sits around $85–87/hour. That's below UAL's post-contract $100+/hour and roughly even with APFA's current $82/hour. The non-union path delivered less headline wage than either union deal, but it did so without retro charges, without a ratification ceremony, and without a contract amendable date. Delta's flight attendants kept the operational flexibility a unionized work group has to negotiate for; the company kept the timing flexibility a union calendar takes away.

What it costs United

The annual run-rate cost of United's contract lands in the $1.0–1.2 billion range. Triangulating: ~30,000 flight attendants × roughly 31% on top of a ~$2.4 billion baseline payroll, plus boarding pay at 7–8% of total compensation, plus benefits loading and the quality-of-life provisions.

For comparison, American's APFA deal averages roughly $840 million per year over the five-year window (the $4.2 billion total contract value divided by five). United's run-rate is meaningfully higher because the raise magnitudes are bigger and UAL has a larger flight attendant headcount.

Management said on the Q1 2026 earnings call that the cost is already baked into 2026 EPS guidance of $7 to $11 per share. So the contract doesn't change the published outlook for this year — but it does close the question of what United's labor cost base looks like going into 2027, when the deal sits at full run-rate against revenue that's still working back from the fuel cycle.

The takeaway

Three different paths to roughly comparable destinations. American went first and locked in industry-leading terms in 2024. Delta sidestepped the cycle with pre-emptive raises and boarding pay starting in 2022. United waited longest and paid the most when it finally settled — both in retro and in immediate raise size. None of the three carriers have a flight attendant pay problem heading into 2027. They got there on different timelines, with different friction costs, and with materially different residual flexibility.