How many hours a day do flight attendants work?
They may spend several nights per week or per month away from home. In most cases, a contract between the airline and the flight attendant union determines the total daily and monthly workable hours. On-duty shifts per day may vary from 4 to 18 hours or longer, such as for international flights. According to FAA regulations, flight attendants can work a maximum of 14 hours a day. However, this can extend to 16 hours in case of unforeseen delays or operational difficulties. Following each working day, a rest period of at least 9 hours is mandatory.They can expect to spend 65-90 hours in the air, and an additional 50 hours preparing the airplane, processing passengers during boarding and performing post-flight procedures. Typically, flight attendants work 12-14 days and log 65-85 flight hours each month, not including overtime.Flight times within the duty periods are restricted to a maximum of 8 hours for flight crews consisting of one pilot and 10 hours for flight crews consisting of two pilots.Crew require a minimum of three hours rest when the flight duty period exceeds 14 hours (from when crew ‘sign on’ to 15 minutes after engines off). For flight duty periods longer than 18 hours, 4. The crew take turns for rest breaks.Here’s where the 35-7 rule comes in. The U. S. Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) guidelines indicate that reserve flight attendants — those who don’t have a specific flight assignment and are on-call — cannot work more than 35 hours of flying time within a seven-day period.