Originally Posted by
maninblack
Airlines hand them out to cover their butts. Sometimes if I'm on the line, I'll collect them. Other times I'll give it back to the passenger.
There have been times when the kiosks go down and we require every passenger to have the old form. When it is found out that the crew did not pass them out on the plane, we will hold the crewmembers on the line until all of their passengers are processed. Sucks for them, but now you'll find crews that pass them out all the time, whether we want them to or not.
I have never seen all the crew members held up until the very last passenger of my wide body flights have cleared into the baggage claim area. Given the pace at which some passengers get to the baggage claim, that could be a very long wait.
I see these forms handed out on most flights of mine back to the US, and on them I’m often amongst the minority of passengers who don’t take the forms. Even many GE members seem to take the forms from the FAs/airline, but I guess those are the ones who are infrequent users of GE kiosks even with their GE membership. I always have a few spare forms that are mostly filled out because sometimes they speed things up for me.
I am curious when the latest batch of these forms handed out on planes were printed out, but not so curious as to invest anything in finding out.