Have you ever wondered what happens when airlines put pilots and flight attendants up in hotels overnight? One longtime reader asked us a question we’d never even considered: Do flight crews earn hotel points or elite-night credit for those stays? We tracked down the answer.
If you’ve followed Your Mileage May Vary for any period of time, you know that in between our bona fide informative posts about credit cards, hotels, airports, airlines, our travels, etc., we tend to throw in more quirky topics here and there. Because everyone needs to know about the things Virgin Voyages doesn’t tell you about their cruises, that time when the South Park guys bought Casa Bonita, one of the best travel-related pieces The Onion ever wrote, and, of course, how to override electronic hotel thermostats so the room will be the temperature you actually want.
That reputation for quirkiness apparently precedes us.
I know this because one of our longtime readers, Christian P., once asked us a question that most travel bloggers probably wouldn’t think to cover:
Do flight attendants and pilots earn hotel points when airlines put them up in hotels overnight?
Honestly, I had no idea.
So I started asking people who would know.
How Airline Hotel Contracts Work
Background information: when flight attendants, pilots, etc., fly, they ideally start and end in their home city. So, for example, they live in Atlanta, work for Delta, and hopefully begin their day at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), fly to all the places on their schedule, and their last flight of the day ends at ATL, so they can sleep in their own home, in their own bed.
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. A flight attendant from Honolulu (HNL) may fly to Newark (EWR) and then has to sleep over in Newark because they’ve already flown as many hours as they’re allowed for the day.
Of course, that’s simplifying the matter, but in that circumstance, the airline pays for the flight crew to stay in a hotel overnight. Each airline has contracts with hotels all across the country (and, for international flights, around the world), so their staff has a place to spend the night if they can’t get back home on a given day, because of their schedules, locations, how long they’ve worked that day, etc.
Variations in Hotel Policies
Most contracted hotels are name brands we know – Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, etc. Those that are name brands all would, of course, typically offer, respectively, Hilton Honors points, World of Hyatt points or Marriott Bonvoy loyalty points for guests paying cash (or the electronic equivalent thereof) to stay with their brands. But whether or not the flight crew earns those points has a lot of variables, which are usually included in the specifics of those aforementioned individual contracts. The specifics will vary from hotel to hotel, even if it’s the same brand. So an airport adjacent Marriott Fairfield Inn & Suites in Des Moines may give flight crew hotel points for their stay, but the one closest to, I dunno, say DFW, might not.
That’s because crew rooms are often booked under negotiated airline contracts or master-billed arrangements, which hotel loyalty programs may treat differently from a regular paid stay booked directly by the guest.
Earning Elite Status Instead of Points
Other hotels won’t give flight staff points, but they’ll offer them qualifying nights toward elite status (this happens more often than giving them points). This, in turn, can eventually give the flight attendants, pilots, etc. status with whatever chain it is.
To add to the confusion, some of these hotels MIGHT gives you points or room nights…but only if you buy something. So if you charge a soda or candy bar to the room, you can get the points. And if you forget to do so, you can kiss that room night goodbye.
That’s how it was explained to me by friends who are/were flight attendants for, respectively, JetBlue, Spirit (RIP) and Delta. And then another friend of mine who works for Delta put it this way:
Yeah, there are always contracts at those hotels we stay at for our layovers. However, it all just depends on what that individual contract stipulates and/or what the individual hotel operator wants to do when it comes to points/stay credit. I can really only speak to what I know at DL, and that’s, in general, we do not get points but usually get stay credit – but it is very inconsistent across brands and even across individual properties. It is usual for me to find myself with stay credit at most brands, but typically I have to make a small room charge in order to “activate” it, if you will. Again, it all just comes down to the individual contract and what is offered. That also includes things like discounts for food and beverage, as different airlines usually get a different discount for purchases at each hotel.
Do Budget Airlines Treat Their Crews Differently?
Yet another friend, who, until recently, worked for Spirit but also used to work for one of the legacy airlines, mentioned another interesting fact: Spirit tended to put their staff up at lower-level hotels than the legacy airlines do. This isn’t really surprising – ultra-low-cost carriers charge less, but it means they have to save wherever and whenever possible.
So what’s the answer?
As is often the case in the travel world…it depends.
Some airline crew members earn elite-night credit. A few may earn hotel points. Others get neither. Sometimes a small purchase charged to the room unlocks the stay credit. Sometimes it doesn’t. It all comes down to the contract between the airline and the hotel—and those contracts can vary not only by hotel brand, but even by individual property.
In other words, there isn’t one universal answer. But at least now you know why.
*** Many thanks to my flight attendant friends from Delta, JetBlue & Spirit, who helped me with the answers to this post. And a special thank you to our reader, Christian P., for asking about it.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
