Many Fas are older retired folks that take the job at LCCs part time in order to get the travel benifits so they can travel around and see the grand kids. They certainly dont do it for money. Then again on the flip side some carriers compensate there FAs very well by allowing unlimited overtime or being able to drop schedules freely. Senior FAs will tell you how important their job is but basically in my opinion they are inflight beverage servers. Yes there is a saftety factor to it but in my experinece the onboard FAs is that I have a hard time believing they are the ones going to save anyone in a true emergancy. Not all Fas but most just seem a little um well - ditsy.