[1] It was not until 1944 when Ada Brown, along with four other flight attendants began forming the Airline Stewardess Association or ALSA (the precursor of the AFA).

The ALPA had been allowed by the leadership to begin recruiting and unionizing other airline employees, including the flight attendants.

[2][4] In July 2006, Northwest Airlines flight attendants voted to replace their independent union with AFA.

On November 4, 2010, AFA was decertified by the National Mediation Board as the bargaining representative for the pre-merger Northwest Airlines flight attendants of Delta Air Lines, after narrowly losing a representational election of the combined group the day before.

[7] That election was triggered by a National Mediation Board ruling that those airlines had formed a single transportation system as a result of a corporate merger.

[citation needed] In May 1993, AFA members at Seattle-based Alaska Airlines were facing a 30-day cooling-off period after more than three years of negotiations.

[11] America West,[12] AirTran and US Airways[13] all settled with AFA on the eve of, or a few minutes after, the end of a 30-day cooling-off period in the 1990s.

[citation needed] Flight attendants at Northwest Airlines, locked in a round of bankruptcy negotiations, deployed a CHAOS campaign days after joining AFA in July, 2006.

[16] Union negotiators concluded a new tentative agreement with millions of dollars in improvements, but which was voted down by a narrow margin.

AFA continued preparations for CHAOS strikes at Northwest pending the outcome of negotiations and litigation surrounding the case.

[19] Northwest and AFA returned to negotiations and reached a new tentative agreement, which was narrowly ratified by the flight attendants on May 29, 2007.

[citation needed] On August 16, 2023, Alaska Airlines flight attendants protested across the US for better wages and working conditions.