-Flying standby is stressful even though it's a perk of the job. Every year flights seem to be more and more full which means it's harder to get on them, negating the very benefit of flying for fun
-Trips seem to be declining in quality. My best year was my very first year when I was most junior in 2016.. 4 hour airport sits are common in between flights, long duty days of 12-15 hours, minimum hour layovers on domestic flights only leaving you enough time to sleep, etc
-Flight attendants seem to constantly be understaffed. My monthly schedule started getting more and more packed, leaving less room to move things around.
- It's such a big company that you feel like a number. Your supervisor never really gets to observe how well you work and performance reviews are solely based on unreliable reviews from passengers. Passenger reviews talking about gate agents or their poor experience with TSA brings down your rating as a flight attendant. You may form somewhat of a relationship with your supervisor, only to discover you've been transferred to someone else because the base size is increasing.
-Getting flown into off days, rotations changing mid-trip, and delays are always a risk with this type of job. Some might say these circumstances increased over time. I think it also depends where you're based as East Coast bases tend to have worse luck with that sort of thing.
-Not necessarily home every night, so packing food for a 3 day trip can be a challenge, especially when you're trying to stay healthy.
-My personal health started to decline only 4 months into the job. I have a history of autoimmune issues (which had been resolved before this job) and this lifestyle was not the best fit for me long-term. The first year I was periodically pulling 24 hour days, running on adrenaline, in order to see as much as I possibly could. The second year I slowed down substantially and tried to organize as much of a "normal" schedule as I could in order to help my sleep cycle/health, but realized how difficult it was with time changes and/or short layovers. Even when trying to find "easy" trips with short duty days and plenty of rest time, it was taking me at least 3 days to recover when I'd get home. It seemed as if all of my off days were taken up by trying to get as much rest as I could and I just couldn't catch up. I started to consistently feel like a zombie and the beauty of travel completely lost its glamour for me.
