Flight attendant Brittney Bluitt was doing drink service on a holiday trip and when a passenger handed her a closed airsickness bag and told her, “This is for you.” Gross, right? She assumed it was trash, took it to the galley, and kept working.
While cleaning up later, she opened the bag and found it contained cash that passengers had contributed as a collective tip on the trip — $208 total. She said tips are uncommon and, when they happen, they’re usually small like $5 or $20. She’d never experienced the whole cabin doing it.
@brittneybluittofficial Blessed! That’s all
Her LinkedIn profile lists her as a flight attendant with JSX. Their Embraer 145s have a maximum of 30 seats.
People generally take the thoughtfulness and community here was pretty special and it was a great gesture because it was unexpected. But airlines don’t generally allow employees to accept tips. It creates bad incentives. Even if nobody asked for perks, cash looks like you’re trying to purchase discretion, freebies, or attention. If you want a trading card, just ask for a trading card—don’t stack incentives.
In fact, at American Airlines, airport customer service employees are allowed to accept “promotional items, complimentary tickets or perishable gifts (candy, fruit, etc)” that’s worth no more than $100. American tells employees to “share[..] with colleagues when practical.” However gifts worth over $100 must be returned. Employees are not allowed to accept “cash, gift cards, and gift certificates” regardless of amount. So no Starbucks gift cards.
They’re in a service role and the correct way to engage and appreciate is to be nice. You can submit a compliment through airline contact procedures, which is a stronger signal than a box of chocolates without ethics problems or putting the crew at risk.
However, flight attendants at Frontier Airlines went viral before the pandemic because the airline had a policy of supplementing cabin crew wages with customer tips. On many airlines flight attendants earn a commission on credit cards passengers sign up for. If you want to ‘tip’ cabin crew, maybe the best way to do it is apply for a credit card using their referral code (JSX, for its part, does not have a cobrand credit card).
