TonyBurr

I was flying ATL-PHL today with three US and USX employees sitting in seats around me. One USX agent, sitting in a seat, was telling teh others that he would bump a paying pax off a flight if an employee wanted to get on the flight, because "they deerve it" (employee that is). I thought that was interesting information he was giving out! This AWA employee was not a good pax: talked during the demo, asked the FA for a Diet Coke just as we tuned onto the runway for takeoff, was loud and obnoxious the whole flight! Does not surprise me he would bump a paying poax because the employee "deserved it".

BoeingBoy

As much as employees (or former employees ) dislike having our travel plans disrupted by not getting on an airplane, that is certainly against policy and should never happen.

Jim

Jaimito Cartero

If a employee is going to work, and has to be on the flight, then they may well indeed bump a paying passenger. If not, then they certainly shouldn't. I am surprised that you can tell a HP employee from a US employee. You mention a US, USX and HP employee in your post, but the USX and the HP seem to be the same person from your description. Are USX agents subcontracted, or actual employees of US Air?

sts603

Unless it was a "must-fly" employee the agent would be fired.

sbtinme

Well, not necessarily. That is, unless the new Shares (new to US anyway) system has better auditing processes in place to catch such things. Yes, it has A L W A Y S been completely against policy for this sort of thing to happen, but I can tell you that I've seen it more than a few times in the past 10 years.

What happens is that the agent is somehow able to code the flight as oversold (or perhaps code the flight as having a number of INOP seats, or some such creativity), which then affords the ability to offer voluntary compensation for a paid pax. With a few exceptions, there always seems to be a handful of folks that jump at a travel voucher, so the flight goes out with the employee (non rev) on board and the bumped pax happily waits for the next flight out with the voucher in his back pocket.

Now, don't misunderstand my intent here. I am quite sure that this is exceedingly rare, but I can attest that it has happened time and again in my presence.

I am also aware of certain agents throughout the network who are still able to convert any existing reservation (award, paid, whatever) to confirmed F weeks or months in advance.

All of this is a HUGE no no and surely grounds for immediate termination. They know this and opt to take the risk from time to time.

Just my $00.02.

sbtinme

And, for what it's worth, ATL as a station has gone to hell in a proverbial handbasket.

I don't say that lightly. I can't speak for the HP team, but the former US team there had phenomenal tenure and was a mix of largely PI folks and a scattering of PS and AL people. ATL was, for decades, an exemplary station with great employees.

In the past 5 years, it has sunk to what I consider unimaginable lows.

kinglobjaw

Even if an employee is commuting to work(going to work), no pax are allowed to be bumped. The employee should plan ahead and should try to board earlier flights. Employees are NEVER allowed to bump any paying pax no matter if he has to or doesnt have to been on a flight, going to work or not going to work, they can never bump pax.

longing4piedmont

Wrong!!!!

phlflyer927

Aren't the staff assigned flights that get them to the origin? That's what was explained to me by a few USX flight attendants.

BoeingBoy

It's the ever popular "It depends" - is the non-working flight part of that crew member's schedule or are they just commuting to their base?

I assume you're talking about what we call "deadheads" (and not the fans of the rock group). That's where we ride an airplane as part of our assigned sequence of flights. It could be at the start of a trip (the series of flights we're to fly over the course of 1-4 days), the end of a trip, or somewhere in the middle. This type of employee travel is on a "must ride" basis, meaning that paying passengers would be bumped if necessary to get the crewmembers on the flight.

Express carriers presumably have something similiar and may even have authority to deadhead crews on mainline flights. I just never had any reason to find out.

In general, though, employees commuting by plane are under the same rules as any other employee travel - we don't get on unless there's an empty seat. Of course, pilots have access to the cockpit jumpseat and F/A's the extra F/A jumpseats.

About the only exception would be for reserves that live out of base. If scheduling needed them bad enough on their off days when they're at home, they could be given must ride status to get to their base (or where-ever scheduling needed them to go to pick up a flight).

Of course, there are situations where non-crew employees would get a guaranteed seat. These would be cases where the employee had to be somewhere as part of their job - similiar to must ride for crews. An understandable, though rare, example would be sending a mechanic to fix a broken plane.

Jim

Jaimito Cartero

I think you're incorrect on this. Please give some supporting information. I know that FAs and Pilots who have to be in a city for their working flights are allowed to bump paying passengers off.

sbtinme

This is not correct (and it's frustrating that you've thrown it out there so matter-of-factly).

There are several scenarios where this is not true. Anytime an employee is flying MUST RIDE (or whatever term they're using these days), they are flying with the same status as any other paying pax on the aircraft.

Some examples might include:

- employees flying into PHL for advanced training on the new Shares res system that begins at 10am this Thursday

- flight crews assigned to fly aircraft where the existing crew in place has become incomplete or unable to fly (e.g. one gets very ill, one has a death in the family and is not up to working the trip home, the original crew times out and they and the pax are stuck waiting for a new flight crew to fly them out, etc, etc)

There are scads more examples; these are mere examples.

It's the singularly most frustrating thing about Flyertalk for me --- it affords everyone the opportunity to trumpet all manner of information whether its accurate or not.

phlflyer927

Yeah, the FAs that I met worked for USX/Mesa but were assigned travel on HP aircraft.

PSU Mudder

This would have been a great time to hand over a C&D certificate.

BoeingBoy

Although I can't say for non-flight crew, but crew on must ride actually have a higher status than regular paying passengers - we can't be bumped. So if the plane goes, deadheading crewmembers will be on it.

Having said that, most are pretty agreeable to utilizing the jumpseats so as to bump as few paying passengers as possible.

Jim