It’s 3 a.m., when Donna Ksery’s phone rings. Within two hours, she’ll be at the airport, uniform pressed, hair pinned, and smile in place, becoming part of the hustle of rolling suitcases and sleep-deprived travelers under the airport’s awful fluorescent lights. “A typical workday for me… I’ve been on call since I started. Let’s say I’m on call from Thursday to Sunday, 24/7; they can call me anytime throughout the day, and they would call me two hours prior to the flight departure. Which is pretty hard.”
Ksery joined Air Canada three years ago, after immigrating from Syria. “I came on an Air Canada flight from Frankfurt to Calgary, and I saw how the flight attendants work on the flight. It was something so nice and cool to be a flight attendant and just travel the world.”
The dream has come true, jet-setting around the globe and meeting passengers from everywhere. But behind the glamour is a reality that most passengers miss: sleepless nights, irregular days, and hidden labour. Much of this emerged in the summer of 2025 when Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants walked off the job over the hours of unpaid work they provide.
Glamour vs. reality
People often imagine stylish uniforms, free travel, and five-star hotels. However, the work that goes on behind the curtain never ends. “When you actually get into the job, you experience danger, turbulence, and passenger conflicts. Sometimes, we have to put ourselves in danger for the passengers, for their safety, the hard work that we do on a flight, the safety checks, and the security and everything.”
Prior to passengers boarding, Ksery and her team have already checked oxygen bottles, first-aid kits, fire extinguishers and emergency slides. The routine is now instinctive, but every facet is verified.
Wesley Lesosky is the president of the Air Canada Component of CUPE, which represents the flight attendants, Air Canada, Air Canada Rouge, 10,500 plus flight attendants. “We represent our members… discipline, human rights cases, scheduling block rules, pay issues, health and safety issues.”
He says the gap between the public image and the job is simple to explain: Safety is central, and much of it is invisible. “Prepping the aircraft, dealing with medical emergencies, dealing with threats to the integrity of the aircraft itself… along with, obviously, the customer service aspect.”
On a typical flight, as the last passenger departs, Ksery walks down the aisle, inspecting each seat, each latch. The cabin lights hum. Outside, dawn creeps in over the tarmac. “Behind all the smiles that you guys see, there’s always a lack of sleep, we’re tired, we’re exhausted. But then we try not to expose it to the public. We have to welcome everyone on board with a big smile, to make them feel better,” she says.
Copious amounts of unpaid work
Ask any flight attendant what stings, and you’ll get a consistent answer. “The number one thing is the amount and copious amounts of unpaid work,” Lesosky says. “That’s a big one right now.” That’s what led to the strike at Air Canada.
Flight attendants check in an hour to an hour-and-a-half prior to departure; that time is typically unpaid. In the new collective agreement, portions of the unpaid work, are compensated at 50 per cent of the hourly rate, which goes up to 70 per cent at the end of the collective agreement, and it is a four-year contract. The list of unpaid or partially paid duties remains long: “training, groundwork, return to work from injury, in between flights, prior to flights, and post-flight,” says Lesosky.
Ksery describes the same reality in the cabin. “They’re expecting us to do the security checks when we board people, and all that is unpaid work basically, until the door is closed. It’s not fair at all; it can go up to 35 hours per month, which is a lot of hours, unpaid hours.”
In Edmonton, labour scholar and human resources and labour relations professor Jason Foster nods when he hears about flight attendants’ unpaid time. “To be honest, this is remarkably unique; one of the core tenets is being paid for every moment of work that you do. And so it’s extremely unusual. When I first learned about the unpaid hours, I was shocked.”
On-call life, irregular hours, family strain
The work rhythm can be unforgiving, especially when you’re on call. “At the beginning, you’re on call within the airlines that is 24/7,” Lesosky says. “You don’t know when you’re going to get called, where you’re going, what your rest will be like, trying to accommodate that sleep within can be incredibly challenging.”
For Ksery and her partner, that unpredictability affects her life at home. “Being on call is pretty hard sometimes. I get called for a standby, four hours at the airport, sometimes they call me, sometimes they don’t. When I don’t have a good sleep, I wouldn’t be in a good physical or mental state to operate the flight.”
“It’s hard to manage between my lifestyle and family time. Sometimes I really want to attend a family gathering, then I get called, and then after that, I come back, and I need to rest, but at the same time, I would want to spend time with my partner or family.”
Fatigue, safety and a system with gaps
Even when she’s home, Ksery says her mind rarely shuts off. “We’re always mentally and physically ready for any emergencies,” she says.
But fatigue isn’t formally recognized as a protected reason for refusing a flight, Lesosky says. “Fatigue is a big thing…but there are always challenges and hurdles. It’s not an easy, ‘Hey, I’m tired, I can’t come to work.’” He wants longer and better rest, shorter reserve periods.
Regulatory protections, he adds, are uneven. “Pilots are covered for these regulations under the code. Flight attendants are not. So I would like to see that the government would take it up for sure.”
Foster agrees that the framework doesn’t fit the reality of the cabin. “This kind of work is not well covered by health and safety legislation, by employment standards, because it’s such unusual work, legislation just doesn’t cover their specific safety hazards,” he says. The unpaid ground-time problem illustrates a deeper gap: “Our legislation doesn’t really account for that it’s just not an issue in most workplaces, as a result, the airline industry often falls through the cracks.”
Although Transport Canada was unwilling to provide an interview for this article, they directed readers to their published fatigue management guidelines. Under the Canadian Aviation Regulations, the rules outlining maximum duty times and required rest periods mainly apply to pilots, not cabin crew. Airlines can also create their own fatigue risk-management systems, but again, these programs are designed with pilots in mind. This gap supports what unions have argued for years: flight attendants do not receive the same regulatory protection, leaving their schedules largely shaped by airline policy rather than federal standards.
Gender, dignity and the value of care
Why does such a glamorous career remain so undervalued? Foster points to history. “It’s long been a gendered occupation, a feminized occupation, which means the work that they do has never been recognized for the skill, the technical and safety components are kind of invisible to the average consumer, then on top of that, emotional labour they have to pretend to be cheerful, that is also a skill that often goes unrecognized.”
Public perception matters. “They’re seen as stewardesses, they’re just here to serve us tea,” he says. Sexualization and service stereotypes “interfere with perceiving them as workers deserving of rights when you start to degrade the dignity of the people doing the work by sexually objectifying them as opposed to keeping 250 people on a flight safe.”
Passengers Perspective
Passengers usually interact with the flight attendant from a limited viewpoint, seeing them as happy, collected, and exceedingly accommodating. Passenger Meryam Attereh, a regular flyer with elite-status perks and lounge access through her travel rewards card, says the first thing that struck her about flight attendants was their ability to remain calm while passengers around them were stressed or fatigued.
Flight attendants are continually moving, helping others, answering questions, and providing assistance, yet they all seem to remain friendly. “It is easy to see they must be balancing multiple things at one time,” she says.
However, she acknowledges that most passengers have a very different perception of the job than the reality of it. “Most passengers believe the flight attendants’ jobs are just serving drinks or being friendly and helpful. I didn’t understand how many safety procedures and emergencies a flight attendant knows until I read about it! Flight attendants know the procedures that could help to save our lives, but passengers really don’t notice them.”
When Attereh found out that flight attendants are not compensated for the time they spend during boarding, waiting, and deplaning, she was shocked. “I was truly surprised by that! Boarding, delayed, deplaning, and everything that goes with it is the most stressful and chaotic time for a flight attendant. They are helping passengers find their seats, dealing with luggage, and dealing with stressed-out passengers…. It is completely unfair!”
“If I could change one thing, it would be the unpaid hours, that shouldn’t even be a problem at the end, you’re working to get paid, not working for free.”
To her, the biggest gap between the perception of flight attendants versus reality is simply respect and dignity. “Honestly, respect and rest,” she said before continuing on to discuss how passengers treat flight attendants like waiters in the air, but in reality, flight attendants manage the entire plane and deal with medical emergencies, unruly passengers, and other issues while still maintaining a friendly manner. Flight attendants should be appreciated for all they do.
Bargaining power and its limits
Even with public support, unions face structural headwinds, Foster says. “These are large corporations that wield a great deal of economic influence, and they have at their disposal the resources of the state to help advance their interests through ending strikes. It really stacks the cards against unions in the airline industry.” Pilots, he notes, often have more leverage; attendants do not.
However, that does not mean that progress is not within reach. Lesosky refers to the most recent contract, “kicking the door down” on unpaid work, gradually increasing the work Foster feels like that precedent will ripple. “By actually getting the precedent of ground pay into their collective agreement, they are going to transform the airline industry across North America. It’s not all we pay, but you get the precedent, and then in future rounds, you bargain for a higher percentage.”
Still, some limits sting. Lesosky points to labour law being used “to kind of inhibit bargaining,” ending the flight attendants labour action and forcing arbitration: “We had that right of free bargaining removed from us.”
Ksery doesn’t hesitate: “If I could change one thing, it would be the unpaid hours, that shouldn’t even be a problem at the end, you’re working to get paid, not working for free.”
Lesosky wants the government to step in for cabin crews the way it already does for flight decks. “I would love if the government could take a role for in-flight service, pilots are covered, flight attendants are not.”
For example, when fatigued, he said, a crew member can actually say, “I’m tired,” without any pushback, and the schedule itself accommodates true rest periods. “It’s always something that we’re continually working on to improve.”
Not the easiest job
If the public could understand one thing, Lesosky says, it’s that the job is demanding by design. “There are a lot of amazing destinations, but it’s not all like that. It comes with a lot of physical demands, mental demands, safety aspects, fatigue; it is not the easiest job, but I think those that stick with it appreciate it, and work around those challenges the best they can.”
Ksery echoes both the pride and the cost. She loves the travel, the human connections, and the moments of help that matter. But she wants the dignity of fair pay for all the hours she works. “We’re working from the check-in time till the door is closed, a lot of responsibilities, and we work really hard, not to get paid at the end.”
The smile, explained
When she gets back to the terminal, Ksery assists the passengers off the aircraft, and then she walks back into a quiet cabin. There are the normal checks to do, the forms to fill, the bins to close, and she often does all of this off the clock. Ksery straightens her blazer once more, takes a deep breath, and walks back into the bright light of the terminal, tired but putting on a brave face.
Maybe that’s the paradox that keeps the system running: the same care flight attendants give strangers is the very care the industry owes them.
