Here's how much flight attendants in 10 airlines say they make

Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

• Flight-attendant pay varies depending on experience, hours worked, and his or her base airport.
• Pay differs among major carriers as well. Some flight attendants self-reported their salaries to Glassdoor and Payscale.
• Here are what some flight attendants say they make on different airlines.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Flight attendant pay is a tricky metric.

Airlines only pay flight attendants for each hour they're in the air - meaning he or she could be on duty for 14 hours, yet get paid only for the six-hour flight, according to Taylor Garland, a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants union.

The base pay also varies depending on a flight attendant's level of experience, which part of the plane they serve, total hours worked, and the airport they fly out of.

Read more: Here are all the ways being a flight attendant has changed in the last 50 years

"Flight Attendants can fly high (a lot of hours in the air) or low (part-time)," Garland told Business Insider. "It's really up to contract provisions and what best suits their needs."

Unfortunately, pay has fallen significantly for flight attendants over the last 40 years: median hourly wages dropped by 26% between 1980 and 2007, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Some flight attendants work overtime to pay bills, and even qualify for food stamps.

Another major factor contributing to flight-attendant pay variance: which carrier they fly on. While flight attendants in the US earn an average of about $48,000, the pay can vary depending on whether they work for Alaska Airlines, Southwest or Spirit. Pay for flight attendants on regional carriers average 45 percent less than mainline workers.

Some flight attendants have reported their salaries on job-listing sites Glassdoor and Payscale to help prospective applicants get a better sense of their hours. These salaries are self reported to the websites, and an average of all flight attendants who chose to write in. The individual flight-attendant counts range from under 10 to over 100. (For two carriers, the number of flight-attendant responses weren't available.)

Here's how much flight attendants say they make on 10 major carriers, according to data on Glassdoor and Payscale: