What is the Salary for BA Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew?

Many people who apply for jobs with BA wonder what is the salary for BA Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew. Whilst there is no straight forward answer to this question (sorry), I will do my best to shed some light on this matter.

What is the Salary for BA Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew?

The salary for BA Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew is made up of four elements: base salary, flight pay, commission and bonus. I will explain each below.

You might also be interested in my post ‘How Can I Get A Job With British Airways as Cabin Crew?’.

Base salary

This is the lowest salary that you will earn and does not change regardless of how many hours you are flying. This has increased over the years with the cost of inflation but last I checked, the base salary for BA Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew was just over £13,000 per annum. Cabin Crew won’t pay much tax or student loan repayments (if they have any) so most of the money stays in your pocket.

Flight pay

This is an hourly rate that you will be paid from the moment that you check in until the moment that you check out. So if you are on a trip, you will be paid this rate 24 hours a day until you return home. Again, this rate has steadily increased in recent years but the last available figure that I was able to obtain (2018) was £3.14 per hour.

Your flight pay can really add up if you do a lot of trips in a month, which is a great boost to your salary. On the other hand, if you don’t fly, there will be no flight pay. If you have annual leave, are off sick, are undertaking your training or have a lot of standbys, you will receive little or no flight pay and therefore will only receive the basic pay for that month.

You might also be interested in my post- ‘What Happens at a British Airways Assessment Day?’.

Commission

Now that BA have started charging for food and drinks onboard their short haul flights, opportunities for Cabin Crew to boost their salary have increased. Having said that, BA’s business model does not have a ‘hard sell’ culture like many budget airlines do, so you are unlikely to ever make a huge amount of money from commission. If you’re interested in how airlines make money from this, I have a detailed post here on the topic- ‘What is airline ancillary revenue management?’.

Some routes are better for selling onboard products than others. For example, on a flight to Nigeria you are likely to sell lots of expensive good, which makes you a few Pounds in commission. Whereas on a flight to Boston you might sell far less and only make a few Pence.

Commission is split between all Cabin Crew onboard and is added to your salary a month in arrears. Commission is set at a rate of 20%.

Bonus

If you do not have any sick days and you are not late at all, you may be entitled to a small bonus every few months. This will likely be a couple of hundred Pounds and will be added to your salary packet.

Is the salary for BA Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew enough to live on?

There has been a lot of controversy over the salary for BA Mixed Fleet Cabin Crew. Many people claim that they do not earn as much money as they thought that they would. This results in many Cabin Crew quitting and finding alternative employment.

Personally, this was the case for me, and I decided to stop flying and return to teaching (I am now a University Lecturer, I also sell Cabin Crew courses). For more details on this you can visit my post- ‘Will I struggle financially working as Cabin Crew?’.