I was a flight attendant for 10 years.

I was a flight attendant for 10 years. It was amazing. The benefits were wonderful. I could fly to Asia for a weekend if I wanted. But the job requires you to be away from home for long periods of time. If you have kids or a family it is a tough job. I no longer fly as a flight attendant. I used to love to travel but now I feel like it is too high of a cost and I don’t want to leave my children. However, I wanted to share my costs for flying as I spent 10 years doing so. <br><br>1. Baggage fees- Don’t bring a carry on. If you have a small personal item you can bring it on but it increases the overall cost of flying. Airlines offer free personal items but they also offer discounts on checked bags too. The overhead compartments are very very small. It will be a huge issue if you bring a bag on the plane that will fit in overhead. You will be gate checking a carry-on or personal item that doesn’t fit in the overhead. In the past we had very large overhead compartments but they wanted to make more room for passengers and less for carry-on so they shrunk the size of the overhead compartments. Be aware some airlines are very strict on the size of carry-ons, personal items, and purses. They will make you gate check it and charge you for it. So, bring small luggage and just check it. The bag you bring must be less than 62 linear inches and weigh less than 50 pounds. <br><br>2. Food- Don’t buy food in the airport it is expensive and not very good. To save money pack snacks and sandwiches in your carry-on. Don’t bring anything too messy or that will spoil easily. Don’t buy food on the plane either. I have eaten the food in first class and it is very good but isn’t worth the cost. If you want to eat like you are in first class at the price of a first-class ticket then you should probably just buy a first class ticket. You might get a few extra inches of leg room but you are still going to be on a crowded airplane. So pack snacks or just wait until you get to your destination to eat. If you want to eat like you are in first class at the price of a coach ticket then pack your food and eat in the airport before you board. You will not get a refund for a meal if you ask for one. It is included in your ticket price. <br><br>3. Ticket prices- So, this is very very hard. It depends on demand and competition. So let’s pretend that there are only two airlines flying to your destination. They set the prices of their tickets here. But, what if a competitor saw those prices and decided to also offer flights to this destination. The third airline is going to be cheaper than the two other airlines. But the two other airlines will match that price because they don’t want customers to choose them over those airlines. But if the third airline can’t compete it will stop flying to your destination. So they will just go back to raising the prices. Now, let’s pretend that there is a huge demand for flights but there is only one airline flying to your destination. If there are more passengers than supply of seats then the airline is going to charge more money. So, the prices will be expensive. But if there are less passengers than seats then prices will be cheap. <br><br>4. Tips- So, we did not used to get tips. But airlines started charging for food and drinks. So now passengers started to tip us. Most flight attendants got a tip when they gave a passenger something to eat or a drink. I usually got tips when I gave out snacks or soda or sometimes water. Tips were nice but not a lot of tips are received from passengers. Maybe enough to eat lunch at a fast food restaurant. We were not allowed to receive tips in the form of cash. So, we could only get tips in the form of credit card tips or cash transfers through Apple pay or Venmo or other apps. So tips were nice but I didn’t like receiving them as it was very very awkward to ask for them. So, if you get a tip it is very nice but flight attendants are not your servers. They don’t want tips but it is very nice of you to give them one. So, if you don’t want to tip flight attendants you don’t have to. <br><br>Now, if you have any other questions about flying then ask!