5 Tips for Flight Attendants: How to Choose the Right Location and Housing

Choosing the proper location and housing option while working as a flight attendant is pretty important. 

Choosing housing that’s too expensive, for example, can eat up your budget and leave your salary sadly lacking in the face of your expenses. 

Choosing housing that’s too far away from where you’ll need to be to catch your next flight could eat up valuable time-off that you could otherwise be using for rest and rejuvenation. 

And finally, choosing housing that doesn’t actually meet your needs could leave you sleep deprived, tired, frustrated, stressed-out, and just plain unhappy. 

With all of this being said, it stands to reason that choosing an ideal location and housing option for your work trips could very well make the difference between a pleasurable, fulfilling career—and a stressful, tiresome ordeal of constant sleep deprivation and emotional ups and downs. 

So let’s dive into it and talk about 5 of the most important tips that you can leverage for yourself, as a flight attendant, to help you choose the right location and housing option for you. 

1. Consider Crash Pads

Crash pads are a first and obvious choice for flight attendants—for a number of reasons. 

They tend to be incredibly affordable, but they also tend to sit close enough to work to be flexible and efficient. 

Of course, they do come with their downsides. 

They don’t offer much in the way of privacy, and they tend to be a bit of a nuisance if you don’t enjoy sleeping in the same space as other people. 

With that being said, it’s always in your best interest as a flight attendant to at least take a closer look and consider the benefits that such accommodations may be able to provide for you. 

2. Look At Nearby Hotels

Hotel rooms are a given home-away-from-home option for traveling flight attendants. 

But they also come with their own downsides. 

The biggest downside to hotels is that they can sometimes be a bit more expensive than your budget will allow. 

But secondly, sometimes it can be surprisingly challenging to find occupancy in a hotel that’s located close enough to the airport to be convenient. 

In this case, you’ll want to consider hotels carefully, without allowing yourself to rely on them too much (unless you prepare and book them in advance). 

And that leads us to our next tip. 

3. Book Your Accommodations In Advance

Booking your accommodations in advance might seem like a common-sense tip. But it pays to go a level deeper here. 

For example—if you tend to fly a regular route, then you may find it a lot easier (and more convenient) to continue to use the same accommodation options over and over again. 

Fair enough. This, in itself, can offer some distinct advantages. 

However, if you don’t tend to fly regular routes, then it may actually be to your benefit to spend time (in the weeks before your departure) doing some deep-dive accommodation homework and booking the best looking options for that trip. 

Some flight attendants make this a lesser-priority task. But if you make it a priority to book high-quality stays in advance (at least, as far in advance as you can) then you can sometimes find even better options in better locations than you ever would have planned on otherwise. 

4. Only Book Accomodations That’ll Give You Free Cancellations

As a flight attendant, you probably already know that booking ahead of time poses at least one unique risk. 

Flight cancellations are happening more and more frequently—and this can really be a pain if you don’t get free cancellations with your bookings. 

Nowadays, it just makes sense to only book accommodations that’ll give you the option to cancel free of charge. 

This will keep you from being required to pay for rooms that you’re just not going to sleep in or use. 

5. Keep Exploring New Options

Always remember to keep exploring new options for accommodations as a flight attendant. 

Just because one option has worked well for a month or two doesn’t mean that you should keep using it on every flight. 

Taking a bit of extra time to ‘scout other options’ could prove incredibly useful and beneficial. 

For example—you could make use of limited-time offers and/or travel coupons or packages to book rooms that you usually wouldn’t book, etc. 

Conclusion

There you have it. 

5 tips for flight attendants to help them choose the best location and housing options every time. 

You’ve got this! 

Now get out there and have some adventures.