yamakake

Yes, the attractive female thing prompts a lot of chit chat and offers to help with luggage and so forth. Ear plugs come in very handy.

It's entirely possible that this guy has never been seated in F ahead of a Medallion, and just said it in hopes of impressing me, but I didn't get that impression (and believe when I say I've heard a lot of BS over the years). The prominently displayed badge and drinks were things I could directky observe.

yamakake

Heh heh.

houserulz77

I get it from here. It's possible, perhaps likely, that a vast majority of Shena posts are inaccurate. But it's also likely that a significant number of these posts are accurate. There are also a significant number of posts where savy FT members have been able to avoid getting duped out of expected services/benefits. Given the rather small percentage of DL customers that post in the forum, I'm sure the number of incidences is measurable.

My larger point was that the number of incidents where employees skirt company policy to help out friends/colleagues is going to be directly related to the ways in which the company prevents, monitors and deals with these incidents.

Shena is short for shenanigans. To me, this is anytime an employee knowingly fails to follow a policy, and does so for their own (including to help friends) advantage.

If the guy goes right, that's fine (assuming they are using L2). However, if he goes right when he should have been allowed to go left, then it's a problem.

Seat 1F

For me, the only real solution to the Shena upgrade issues is for Delta (and all US carriers for that matter) to dramatically cut back on non-rev benefits. Frankly, my view is that the benefit is a relic of days gone by. Really makes no sense to continue to offer these today. Why should an employee or retiree friend get to fly free on the carrier? Just because? It makes no sense.

The problem is that non-rev benefits are grandfathered into contracts and must be one of the most difficult things to ammend. To be honest, I am surprised that when DL/UA/NW went through chapter 11, they did not address the non-rev benefit issue at the time. Maybe AA will be the first if they do enter into chapter 11 in the future.

My recommendation is to completely eliminate friends and extended family non-rev perks and limit the employee perks to maybe 2-3 trips per year with one companion allowed if they travel with the employee. And these allowable trips should only be in Y class with no option for upgrading to F or J. Period!!

Let the flames commence as they will.....but I am convinced this is the only way to deal with this issue and put an end to employees feeling entitled and the opportunity for games to be played.

djpc33

Just for the non rev comment about have travel perks removed come on, anyway they only get a seat if there is a seat available , if the flights full they wait till the next one . Every job has perks ( well most) guys who work at chocolate factories eat free chocolate , guys who work for Guinness drink cheap /free Guinness , lucky them lol and people who work for airlines get cheap flights that's just the way it goes . Also you would be surprised how much revenue carriers make giving staff cheap tickets , making 20 (or whatever fare) for a seat or letting it go empty.........

Medeski

Given what most airline employees get paid be prepared to enjoy even crappier service with even less caring attitudes. Every person I know who works for the airlines does it because of the travel benefits and not because its a good paying job. Some of the folks I know would make more money flipping burgers at the local burger joint than they do with the airlines but keep working their job because of the flight benefits.

domcharles

With all due respect, "you" don't get a bad rep b/c someone is bragging. "You" get a bad rep b/c your fellow employees who are gate agents break DELTA's policy and make up their own rules. Most of us don't need someone to brag to us ... more times than not, we are able to notice it on our own.

Tpa-flyer

Am I wrong to interpret many comments in this thread as indicative of numerous revenue passengers begrudging airline employees their flight benefits? Would it be unfair to return to the days when corporations disallowed the accrual of frequent flier miles into personal accounts if the company is paying for the tickets? Would it be reasonable to return to a FF program structure where upgrades to the front cabin did not exist thus eliminating any notion of a Medallian not getting their earned, privileged, deserved upg? It's ok for a Medallian to consider he/she has earned the upg but not ok for an airline employee to be viewed as having earned the nonrev seat? In so many ways, in my opinion, the airline industry, not just DL, has created a monster via FF programs given the costs to manage them, oversee them, support them.

PRWeezer

Admittedly being picky here, but what kind of contracts are you talking about? Union contracts? With the exception of a couple of work groups, DL employees are for the most part non-union, so it's in irrelevant point in the Delta forum. If you're going to re-write employee policy, at least get your facts straight about the employees you aim to impact.

I would guess most of the elite flyers on these forums have used benefits gained from business travel (paid for by their employer) for personal use, likely bringing friends & family along to enjoy those perks. Would you say that's wrong too? (Personally I'm all for it!) As others have said, most jobs involve some kind of perk.

And now, back to the forum's regularly scheduled dead horse beating....

houserulz77

The nuance here is that the nonrev earned a seat and the Medallion earned a seat in F. As long as the benefit for the former does not infringe on the benefit for the latter, I don't really think anyone cares.

But when employees of a company extend benefits to their colleagues which should have gone to a customer, that's a problem.

This statement is really problematic. It assumes that the benefits you get from a SkyMile aren't paid for through purchases. Frequent flyer programs are one of the few parts of the common airline business model that has consistently been successful. This is evidenced by the fact that so many other businesses, in the service and retail sectors, have developed rewards programs.

zsmith2

I think this thread has strayed way off topic....surprise surprise. I for one think this thread should come to an end!

Non-NonRev

Couldn't agree more.

In the mid-1990s the carrier that I worked for at the time (CO) was suffering a plague of true "shena" (love that term) situations, especially at EWR (one reason that the problem was bad there was that many of the CO staff there were former PeopleExpress and Eastern workers, who apparently felt more loyalty to their cronies than to the revenue passengers who were the very reason for their jobs)

CO had implemented an automated upgrade system, however, the shena people quickly learned how to circumvent it. HQ in Houston finally got wind of what was going on, and implemented a stringent system of auditing and a no-tolerance policy - a number of GAs lost their jobs, and as if by magic, the problem went away.....

To the person who posted about the non-rev rearranging luggage in the F bins, there was a person who worked in my office who had a reputation of doing this (and generally being obnoxious on board). The person seemed nice in the office, but one day I witnessed his act, and knew it was true. It turns out that the lead FA had seen him do this previously, and she filed a complaint with the staff travel office. The employee got his flight privileges suspended for two months, with a termination warning (of his job, not just flight priveleges) if he did it again

houserulz77

OP shared experience sitting with a nonrev who shared their experience getting upgrades, and suggested the upgrades were sometimes the result of a little GA magic.

The entire thread has been about that very topic.

So what would be on topic? We all flame the OP for telling the story his seatmate told him?

Clearly your handle is very appropriate!

This is all it would take. I'm sure it's a small minority who commit a majority of the offenses. Shame a lot of people who are not in that minority want to defend those who are.

zsmith2

Wow have you not read the past couple of pages? These threads always end up the same way.

houserulz77

Yeah I read them all. People unhappy with the Shena stuff are now proposing ways to minimize the problem, including:

1) Getting rid of upgrades for nonrevs
2) Harsh consequences for GAs who upgrade out of order
3) Getting rid of nonrev travel

I agree that #3 is excessive, but when there is a clear issue that has been talked about repeatedly, yet the issue continues, people will start coming up with potential solutions which are more drastic.

It's not OT, it's simply problem-solving.