Status and scope
This page asks three narrow questions: what the rejected tentative agreement clearly would have improved, where it appears to have traded for additional company flexibility or left meaningful exposure in place, and what largely remained status quo. The controlling baseline here is the 2019–2023 PSA agreement, which remained amendable after July 15, 2023. The proposed comparator is the rejected 2026–2029 tentative agreement.
The comparison is text-bound rather than campaign-bound. Where the proposal is clean, this page uses the proposal as written. Where the proposal still shows redline carryover, duplicate text, or unclear cross-references, this page says so plainly instead of treating draft artifacts as settled contractual gains.
Pay scale and early-career economics
The biggest gains in the rejected TA were economic. In the current agreement, Section 3.B ends at DOS+3 with rates of $20.16 for 0–6 months, $25.20 at 1 year, $27.06 at 2 years, $38.19 at 10 years, and $43.51 at 18 years. In the tentative agreement, Section 3.B would have moved 0–6 months, 7–12 months, 1 year, and 2 years all to $29.77 on March 6, 2026, then to $30.22 on March 6, 2027, and $30.67 on March 6, 2028. The same table would have taken 10 years to $42.01 in 2026 and 18 years to $47.86 in 2026. That is a real early-career reset, not a cosmetic adjustment.
The TA also added new money outside the base rate table. Section 3.Q would have added boarding pay effective March 6, 2027 at 50% of the flight attendant’s hourly rate for all minutes of the established boarding time for each actual boarding, paid above guarantee. Section 3.M would have increased deadhead pay from 50% to 75% effective March 6, 2028, while all-deadhead days would move to minimum-day-pay floors. Section 6.A would have increased per diem to $2.05 on March 6, 2026, $2.10 on March 6, 2027, and $2.15 on March 6, 2028. The separate Lump Sum Payment LOA would have paid 1.5% of gross earnings for August 1, 2023 through October 31, 2025, 5.0% for November 2025, and 6.0% for December 2025, excluding special checks and profit sharing.
The tradeoffs in this section were timing and administration. Boarding pay would not have begun until the second contract year. Seventy-five percent deadhead would not have begun until the third contract year. The lump-sum LOA expressly allowed 401(k) deferral but no company match on the payment. The biggest implementation risk is that boarding pay in Section 3.Q depends on company-established boarding times rather than on a hard-coded contract minute value.
Several core pay structures also would have stayed intact. Section 3.C keeps the seventy-five (75) hour monthly guarantee. Section 3.I keeps early report and extension pay at one and one-half (1.5) times the hourly rate. Section 3.K keeps junior-assignment pay at one and one-half (1.5) times the hourly rate for hours flown above guarantee. Section 3.G keeps Ready Reserve pay at four (4) hours or actual credit, whichever is greater. Even the apparent CDO improvement should be read carefully: the TA redline changes Section 3.F.3 from 3.5 to 4.0 hours for each CDO, but Section 3.H of the current agreement already pays a scheduled CDO trip at the greater of actual flight time or four hours, so the cleaner measurable gains are the rate table, boarding pay, deadhead, per diem, and the lump-sum LOA.
Reserve quality of life
PSA’s current reserve system is already structured. The existing agreement gives reserves ten (10) days off in a full month, one day free from all duty in every seven consecutive days, no fewer than four (4) Golden Days per bid period, a twelve (12) hour long-call standard, a fourteen (14) hour short-call RAP, and Ready Reserve assignments of up to eight (8) hours with no more than three consecutive Ready Reserve days.
The rejected TA would have improved some of that architecture, but not rewritten it. Section 9.D would have reduced short-call RAP from fourteen (14) hours to thirteen (13) hours. Section 9.E would have capped Ready Reserve at no more than ten (10) times in a calendar month unless no other reserves were available. Section 8.I.2 would have moved Golden Days toward a stronger request model by allowing a reserve to request up to six (6) Golden Days in as many as three blocks, and the same section adds language saying non-Golden days would be movable only when operationally necessary.
The reserve tradeoff is that the TA still left a large amount of administration in place, and some of the draft language is not clean enough to overstate. The Golden Day section appears to add pay consequences when non-Golden days are moved, but the cross-reference in the redline is not clean enough to treat every draft remedy as settled integrated language. Section 9.N also leaves one important legacy exposure untouched: a flight attendant who trades the first day of a reserve block still forfeits the known RAP.
The broader structural point is continuity with some improvement. Minimum days off stayed at the same 11/10 framework, long-call stayed at twelve (12) hours, Ready Reserve still runs through an eight-hour airport-availability construct, and the reserve system still depends on FOLO preferences, bucket assignment ordering, and close contract administration. The TA would likely have made reserve more livable, but not radically simpler.
Insurance and healthcare
This is the area with the least substantive movement. Section 25.A keeps company-paid life insurance at 1.5 times annual salary, still capped at $50,000, with the TA only adjusting the rounding language from the nearest $500 to the nearest $1,000. Section 25.B keeps the same parity-based medical and dental framework and the same employee premium-growth cap: future employee premium increases may not exceed one percent (1%) each January 1 during the term of the agreement, not to exceed three percent (3%) total, and the Company must still meet and confer with the MEC before any increase.
Sections 25.C, 25.D, and 25.E also remained fundamentally status quo. The TA continued company-paid short-term disability for up to twenty-six (26) weeks with a fourteen (14) day waiting period, company-paid long-term disability, and a Section 125 Flexible Spending Account plan. So the healthcare story here is not a breakthrough. It is continuity. The tentative agreement did not appear to trade away healthcare, but it also did not materially improve it.
Bidding, scheduling, and IRROPS protections
The clearest scheduling improvements are in Section 8 rather than in a new no-touch reassignment model. Section 8.A.3 would have reduced section limits from seven (7) scheduled and nine (9) actual landings to six (6) scheduled and seven (7) actual landings. Section 8.I.5 would have moved certain trip-swap, trip-trade, and trip-drop floors from sixty (60) hours to forty (40) hours upon PBS implementation. The TA also adds commuter-friendly support outside the core scheduling sections, including a $250 monthly commuter hotel reimbursement program in Section 6.B.5 and self-booked space-positive training travel in Section 18.D.
The employer-flex tradeoffs are most visible in disruption language. Section 7.E largely preserves the current IROP framework — formal declaration, hotel contactability after legal rest, sixty (60) minute report if the flight attendant is not using the hotel, and adjustment only within the original trip footprint unless extension rules then apply — but the TA adds a new Section 7.E.12 reserve-assignment override during a declared IROP. That provision says the Company may assign trips to reserve flight attendants by available days in reverse seniority order and that Section 9.F.3 will not apply during IROP. Section 7.C also makes international report time explicitly sixty (60) minutes at the airport, which is a real pre-duty burden increase for those pairings.
This is where the page should be blunt: the TA would likely have made ordinary scheduling better through landings caps, PBS-related flexibility, and new pay on non-block work, but it did not eliminate process-heavy reassignment authority. The contract still works mainly through defined procedure, notice, pay-credit rules, and grievance evidence rather than through broad categorical bars on company action.
Retirement provisions
Retirement improved, but only at one service point. Section 27.B in the current agreement matches 2% after six (6) months, 3% after five (5) full years, and 4% after twelve (12) full years. The TA keeps the 2% and 3% tiers exactly where they are and only changes the twelve-plus-years tier from 4% to 5%.
Everything else in the retirement architecture remains the same. The plan is still a 401(k), still provides salary deferral, rollover contributions, self-directed investments, and distributions, and still vests company contributions after three (3) years. Even the separate Lump Sum Payment LOA does not change that structure: it says the lump sum would be eligible for 401(k) deferral, but without company match.
So retirement was a real but narrow gain. Senior flight attendants with twelve or more full years would have seen a better match. Everyone else would still be living inside the same PSA retirement design.
Enforcement, discipline, and dispute resolution
This area is mixed. On the positive side, Section 16.B turns non-disciplinary grievances into a hearing-based process rather than a pure written-step response. The TA would require a hearing within fifteen (15) days after receipt of the grievance and a written decision within ten (10) days after the close of the hearing. The front half of Section 17 also proposes a three-member System Board consisting of one union member, one company member, and one neutral chair from the outset.
The clearest concession is Section 16.C.1.b, which reduces investigatory-meeting notice from seven (7) days to five (5) days. Section 24.E also becomes more employer-friendly in one respect by keeping corrective-action documents in the personnel file for the length of employment, even though those documents are only considered active for two years and the TA tries to limit later uses.
There is also a document-integrity problem that should not be hidden on a public page. The uploaded TA contains a new three-member neutral-board structure in Section 17, but it later reproduces older two-member-board / neutral-on-deadlock language in the same section. Until a clean integrated text exists, it is safer to treat Section 17 as improved in intent but unresolved in final drafting.
Safety, fatigue, and side-letter architecture
The TA does add one meaningful operational-safety improvement. Section 23.L would make a flight attendant who removes herself or himself from flight status due to accepted fatigue eligible to use sick time for the lost flights. The same section gives CWA-AFA up to three representatives at fatigue risk management committee meetings, with one voting representative. That is a stronger safety-governance hook than the current public agreement provides.
The side-letter package also matters. The PBS LOA commits the parties to IBS PBS software, a six-member joint committee split evenly between Company and CWA-AFA, consensus decision-making on implementation issues, equal access to settings and parameters, and a bar on changing the PBS algorithm without joint-committee agreement. The Lump Sum Payment LOA creates the separate 1.5% / 5.0% / 6.0% payment formula and makes clear that the payment would be eligible for 401(k) deferral without company match.
The package also includes Profit Sharing and Canadian Flying LOAs. The current 2019 public CBA text incorporates related LOAs as part of the Agreement, but the public 2019 PDF does not append a comparable LOA stack. That means side-letter comparisons should be read carefully unless and until there is a clean integrated successor agreement with a complete appendix package.
Comparative bottom line
If the rejected TA had been ratified, the biggest visible improvements would have been money: much stronger early-career rates, boarding pay beginning in 2027, higher deadhead beginning in 2028, slightly better per diem, a lump-sum payment LOA, and a better 401(k) match for flight attendants with twelve or more full years of service. Reserve quality of life also would likely have improved at the margins through a shorter short-call RAP, more requested Golden Days, and a cap on how often a reserve could be assigned Ready Reserve in a calendar month.
The clearest givebacks or exposed pressure points were elsewhere. The proposal shortened discipline-investigation notice, left broad IROP flex in place and added a reserve-assignment override during declared IROP, made international report time explicitly longer for international flying, and relied heavily on company-set or jointly administered variables such as established boarding time and PBS settings. Those are not automatic deal-breakers, but they are exactly the kind of terms that create implementation fights.
What remained status quo is just as important. The contract keeps the seventy-five (75) hour guarantee, the eleven/ten day-off structure, the one-day-in-seven rule, the healthcare cost-growth cap, the 401(k)-based retirement model, and most of PSA’s process-heavy scheduling and reserve architecture. That is why this TA is best described as a materially richer economic package layered onto a familiar regional work-rule system, not as a clean-sheet rewrite of PSA’s contract structure.