IROPS, compared.
Weather, maintenance, ATC. When the operation melts down, the recovery runs on Flight Attendants' time. Here is what nine AFA contracts put in writing for that day, side by side with SkyWest's policy manual.
How long can they keep you on duty?
On paper, most airlines schedule a 14-hour day. The difference shows up when the day goes sideways. Toggle to the actual limit, then tap any airline.
Hours of duty, domestic, as written in each agreement. Where a contract sets more than one figure, the standard day is shown and the details are in the tap-down. The striped bar means the manual sets no figure at all: SkyWest's manual says Flight Attendants "will not be scheduled for more than 14 hours" and leaves everything after that to the FARs.
Same storms. Different rulebooks.
SkyWest's manual has pay rules for cancellations and holding, and some of them read fine. The gap is in what happens when the rule isn't followed, or when the company decides the rule doesn't apply today.
A hotel in base during IROPS comes "at the discretion of a Crew Support supervisor or manager." Reassignment off a cancellation is "at the Company's discretion according to operational need."
If you grieve it, SIA decides whether your grievance is valid. If it agrees, the grievance is "reviewed and discussed" with the company and then "closed." No arbitrator. No neutral.
Duty limits, rest, hotels, premiums and pay protection are written down with numbers, and the company has to negotiate to change them.
When a rule is broken, a grievance can go all the way to a System Board of Adjustment with a neutral arbitrator whose decision is final and binding.
SkyWest Flight Attendants started this campaign and run it today. The goal is not a better manual. It is an enforceable contract, built on our own priorities, that management cannot rewrite on its own.SIA is the SkyWest InFlight Association, the in-house group the company signs the manual with.
Pick an airline. Compare it to SkyWest.
Eight questions that decide how a bad day ends, answered from each carrier's contract and from SkyWest's manual.
Where SkyWest stands alone.
Out of the nine contracts compared, count how many put each protection in writing.
send unresolved disputes to a neutral arbitrator
cap the actual duty day, not just the scheduled one
write a minimum rest for line holders into the agreement
carry a commuter policy you can rely on
SkyWest's manual has none of the four. Scheduled hours only, rest "subject to current FARs," no commuter policy, and a grievance that ends wherever SIA and management say it ends.
The largest regional sets the bar.
Right now it sets it from a policy manual. That is one of the reasons we are organizing.
Ten hours. Then you get a choice.
A 2018 memorandum in the manual gives a stranded Flight Attendant two options: stay and work the delayed flying at time and a half, or be released and sent home unpaid, positive space.
The choice opens only after a delay of more than ten hours past your original release. Shorter than that, the memo's own example says you would not have the option to be released.
A contract is the recovery plan.
Nine airlines, nine contracts, each with a duty limit, a rest floor, a hotel rule and a neutral at the end of the line. We work for the tenth, and we are the biggest of the regionals. Sign and send in a card, and we take one step closer to writing our own, and to raising the bar for every regional Flight Attendant with us.
Sources: the collective bargaining agreements in force at Envoy (2021), PSA (2019), Piedmont (2022), Horizon (2020), Mesa (2025), GoJet (2025), Alaska (2025), United (2026) and Frontier (2019), and SkyWest's Flight Attendant Policy Manual, Revision 27 (September 2025) with its memoranda and temporary revisions. Contract status checked October 2026: the PSA, Horizon, Frontier, Envoy and Piedmont agreements remain in force while those Flight Attendants negotiate their next ones. Figures are the standard domestic rules; international and reserve rules differ. The regional pay gap of roughly 45% for the same work is AFA's figure. Questions about your own situation during IROPS? Reach the Lifelines team, privately.
