AirTran Airways A+ Rewards - Stop boarding so the Captain can put his bag in the overhead?

.....and flirt with the FA. At the airplane door of my return flight at BWI today the FA stops me and asks the Captain if he wants to "put his bag up before all the overheads are full". He says yeah yeah and comes out of the cockpit stopping to tell the FA what a great job she's doing. He then takes his sweet time sauntering back to Y and puts his bag up. Returns to chat/flirt with the FA while I and about 30 others are waiting on the jetway. The timing was irritating and the banter somewhat unprofessional. The flight was full and I had to wonder - maybe it would be a good idea to LET THE PAYING CUSTOMERS USE THE OVERHEAD BINS AND KEEP YOUR DAMN BAG IN THE COCKPIT for the 2 hour flight. Of course the FA's in the back were running around like chickens without heads trying to store PAX bags just ahead of departure. But hey - I'm glad the Captain didn't have to turn around in his seat and see his bag looking at him....:rolleyes:

Addressing the title of your post, I have no idea how much storage is in the cockpit for pilot/FO baggage, but if the pilot is carrying the amount allowed and needs to use bin storage, stowing it early is better than stowing it later. Flight prep in the cockpit takes a bit of time - better to hold up boarding for a minute to allow the prep to occur sooner, especially if the pilot is late due to a delayed earlier flight.

OTOH, what you describe is not acceptable. Stow the bag and get back to work!

unfortunately the 717 does not have space for the pilots bags except there flight bag. Company policy is for the crews to put there bags in the rear most part of the aircraft. It is a pain especially if there is a crew swap and passangers are already on board or in your case they are in the middle of boarding. Bad design by douglas(later bought by boeing).

On some other airlines, the flight crew puts their bags in the first class overhead over row 1 taking the limited storage out of that cabin. So it could always be worse.