Horizon / CWA-AFA Mediation
Year-End Review · 2025
Key Takeaways
- Horizon Flight Attendants moved into formal federal mediation in 2025, giving the dispute a docketed National Mediation Board structure under the Railway Labor Act.
- Public bargaining disclosures remained limited, so the clearest external signals were session cadence, issue sequencing, and whether the parties appeared to be moving from article cleanup into economics.
- The first mediated session in June 2025 was mainly diagnostic, with the mediator reviewing open issues across the contract rather than pushing immediate proposal trading.
- By late summer and early fall, the parties had moved through most open issues and reached at least one mediated tentative agreement on a contract section.
- A federal government shutdown in October complicated mediator availability, but the parties still tried to preserve bargaining momentum.
- At year-end 2025, the case remained in mediation with no public tentative agreement on the core economic package, no release from mediation, and no strike deadline in effect.
Background & Context
Horizon Flight Attendants, represented by CWA-AFA, became amendable in 2024 and sought federal mediation in January 2025 after direct bargaining failed to produce a new agreement. Under the Railway Labor Act, mediation does not impose a settlement; any agreement must still be voluntarily reached by the parties and ratified by the membership.
That matters in a case like Horizon because the public record is thinner than it is at larger carriers. As a result, CrewSignal weighs timing, bargaining cadence, and issue concentration more heavily than rhetoric when evaluating whether the dispute is moving toward agreement.
Move into Federal Mediation (January–April 2025)
The first major 2025 milestone was formal federal mediation. That shifted the dispute out of ordinary direct bargaining and into a docketed NMB process with a named mediator, making session cadence and mediator involvement more important external indicators.
Public updates during the spring suggested that smaller contract sections were being cleared so the parties could focus more directly on compensation, scheduling, reserve, and other quality-of-life issues. By late April, the first full mediation block had been scheduled for late June in Chicago.
First Mediated Sessions Establish the Bargaining Baseline (June–September 2025)
The June 23–25 mediation session primarily established the structure of the case. The mediator worked through the contract article by article with both sides to identify what had already been tentatively agreed, what remained open, and how those issues connected to one another. No proposals were passed in that first mediated session, which is typical when a case is still being organized for sustained mediation.
The second session, held July 30 through August 1, kept that review moving and reportedly left only compensation and one duty-time-expense section to complete in the mediator-led issue inventory. By the third session, held September 16–18, the parties had finished that review and reached a tentative agreement on Article 12, Uniforms—the first public tentative agreement reported after mediation began.
Shutdown Disruption and Late-Year Bargaining (October–December 2025)
In October, the federal government shutdown created an unusual process complication: NMB mediators were furloughed, which threatened scheduled mediation dates. Horizon’s bargaining updates made clear that the parties still wanted to keep moving and explored meeting without the mediator if necessary.
Later public updates suggested that bargaining continued on targeted items, including commuter protections and personal-leave language, while the most difficult issues increasingly clustered around hours of service, scheduling, reserve, and economics. By December, public messaging pointed to a case that was running out of non-economic issues and heading toward a more traditional economic confrontation rather than a near-term public closing sequence.
Status at Year-End 2025
By the close of 2025, Horizon / CWA-AFA mediation remained active but not publicly near ratification:
- The case was still in formal NMB mediation under docket A-14102.
- No public tentative agreement covering the core economic package had emerged.
- No release from mediation, cooling-off period, or strike deadline had been announced.
- The key unresolved watch areas appeared to be compensation, scheduling, reserve, and other ratification-sensitive quality-of-life provisions.
- Subsequent company filings confirmed that negotiations were still ongoing with CWA-AFA and that an NMB mediator remained involved.