U.S. flight attendants are feeling fed up as well

Like their Air Canada counterparts, they're frustrated by pay and job issues — but are less likely to strike.

- BY RIO YAMAT

PSA AIRLINES flight attendants protest outside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Monday.

At the end of work trips, Nathan Miller goes home to a makeshift bedroom in his parents' house in Virginia.

The 29-year-old flight attendant is part of a PSA Airlines crew based in Philadelphia, but he can't afford to live there.

Miller says he makes about $24,000 a year staffing multiple flights a day as a full-time attendant for the American Airlines subsidiary. To get to work, he commutes by plane between Virginia Beach and Philadelphia International Airport, a distance of about 215 miles.

"I've considered finding a whole new job. It's not something that I want to do," said Miller, who joined PSA two years ago. "But it's not sustainable."

His situation isn't unique. Frustrations among flight attendants at both regional and legacy airlines have been building for years over paychecks that many of them say don't match the weight of what their jobs demand. Compounding the discontent over hourly wages is a longstanding airline practice of not paying attendants for the work they perform on the ground, like getting passengers on and off planes.

Air Canada's flight attendants put a public spotlight on these simmering issues when about 10,000 of them walked off the job last weekend, leading the airline to cancel more than 3,100 flights. The strike ended Tuesday with a tentative deal that includes wage increases and, for the first time, pay for boarding passengers.