rpcbind

No problem with me, though if you bump me back to E+, could you at least ask your peer to turn on Ch9?

Do you know if this is spelled out in any publicly-available document? That's an awesome contractual example of how much middle seats suck...

y2k1jetta

A tired pilot taking a nap and talking for hours seems like a conflict of interest.

freshairborne

Just a quick point regarding contracts and the provisions therein: everything in our contracts is negotiated. That means that whatever we have of value was traded for something, generally $/hour. So even if we non-rev and end up in first class, or even just end up on the airplane at all, or even don't end up on the airplane at all, we paid for it.

So how does that sound: pay for something that you might not even get?

When my wife and I have to get somewhere at a certain time, we buy tickets, same as everyone else.

When I am contractually owed a seat in FC, I'm going to get it.

The posts here that insinuate that we are "overentitled" when we exercise our contractual rights are the reason I wear plain clothes and sit and read a book and keep to myself when I'm flying.

FAB

mgcsinc

Don't you think your position is a bit inconsistent?

acesflyerSFO

+1, support the Pilots POV, elite benefits are a privilege, contracts are binding. I have had much better experience with UA pilots.

I believe some folks on this thread may still be upset over comments made about elites being "over entitled" and are directing frustration inappropriately.

andrewwm

Honestly, if you think a pilot that will soon have to safely man a multi-hundred-ton aluminum tube up into the air does not deserve a decent rest before his job so that you can have your precious shrimp salad on an upgrade from an el-cheapo fare then you are overentitled.

g-code

+1 to non-revs going behind all upgrades. It has no bearing on whether or not an elite receives an upgrade. I have NEVER seen a non-rev go ahead of an elite. (The one exception being a last second upgrade for an elite as the door was closing and the elite didn't want the seat bc they are traveling with a child and the plane was literally about to push.)

It is a little disheartening to see a few of the comments here. I work for one of the numerous Express carriers and will go out of my way to snag an elite's gate checked bag and bring it up off the ramp if they tell me they have a tight connection. Heck, I'll help put gate checks on the cart if it will get us out on-time.

Unions come in flavors and ours often works proactively and constructively with the company on many issues. Pension funds are LONG gone just as Y class meals are.

Just as I am sure many of you have negotiated benefits on an individual level, so does a pilot group on a group level. One must also remember that earning a pilot position at a major like United takes AT LEAST 8-10 years of training and career building.
While, the occasional customer may see me as "the help" or a "bus driver", the vast majority of ya'll are great, and I like to think you know better . Thus I go out of my way to do any little extra thing I can to make your travel a little more bearable (dare I say enjoyable).

Having a good pilot contract is a positive thing for the customer as well. It increases the applicant pool and allows an airline to be VERY selective with who they hire. Bachelors degree or higher, clean training record, no DUIs, no speeding tickets, solid psych eval, etc. etc.

Antipode

Well I guess all those who have C/F class travel in their travel policies/contracts are also over-entitled. Because hey, that extra thousands of dollars that the employees are spending are being passed onto my costs, and it cuts into my privileges as a customer of your company. That money should be spent on me instead, right? I mean, there are other companies out there where all travel is in Y / cheapest available, and if they can deal, so can you. The customer should always go first, period.

Or maybe there's a reason that policy is there for dead-heading employees, just like there's a reason for a C/F travel policy for employees of certain companies. Or it's a negotiated benefit. Or it's to draw top talent. Or all of the above.

LaserSailor

+1000.

chinatraderjmr

I'm as anti pilot union as they come but I must disagree. Pilots only get positive space F seats when there is a good reason for it (UA cares less about there employees then they do about their passengers if that's even psbl). Usually when a pilot is in a CONFIRMED F Seat it's because THE COMPANY is re positioning him for a flight and he needs his rest. While I may be anti pilot union I'm certainly not anti pilot and they deserve to be treated just as well be their employer before going to work as a business man who has a meeting one hour after landing in HKG

Bushdog

This is the issue to me. I'm entirely in agreement. Not only is a pilot in F rare, if they are there, I'm quite confident it is for a good reason.

EWR756

Perhaps your intent was to offend me but frankly, that's not going to happen. I don't enjoy riding in the back of airplanes. In any class of service. I'd be happy if deadheading was not allowed. That would work just fine for me.

That's never going to happen however and in that vein, my peers and I will negotiate the best deal possible. If that creates a disincentive for the company that leads to fewer deadhead segments, I'd be thrilled.

If you'd like to secure first class or E+ travel for yourself, you can do that. You'd have to purchase it however, and that's the where your real issue is. You don't want to purchase it. Ever. You'd like to have it awarded to you. I don't really object to that but as a result, you're competing with a large number of folks who also don't want to purchase the upgraded product. That's not my issue to take up and I steer clear of those discussions at all costs.

I'm certain that if you were able to secure better free product upgrades somewhere else, you'd do that post haste. I wish you luck in that search. In the meantime, I'll sit in whatever class of service my contract affords me and you'd most likely do the same if our roles were reversed.

This policy is outlined in our Pilot CBA. It's almost NEVER a problem. I don't want to sit in the middle seat for any price. This provision wasn't negotiated to secure better pay, it was negotiated to secure better seats.

As a result of the merger, UAL has separate sUA and sCAL ops at several hub cities and this generates greater need for excessive crew movements via deadhead. I hope that when the operations are finally combined, we'll see less DHD segments (particularly between IAH-ORD, IAH-LAX) then we see currently.

LAXOGG

Experienced something similar yesterday. On my LAX-OGG flight, the customer in the seat in front of us was quite upset when she informed everyone with earshot that the first class seats that she and her husband purchased 8 months ago were taken away. She was moved from 1A to a seat towards the back of first class and her husband was moved to E. Moments later a uniformed pilot took her husband's original seat in 1B. A gate agent later came by with a travel certificate for the customers inconvenience and sincerely apologized. I do not know how much she received. Interestingly, the gate agent made no mention of downgrade compensation. I do not know if this is automatic or something the customer needs to initiate. This was not an experienced traveler and I doubt that she had any knowledge of downgrade compensation. Also, why should a full/discounted fare customer get the boot, even with no status, over an upgrader? Nine of the 16 seats were upgraded according to the mobile app.

It was also interesting to note that there was a rotation of the pilots during the flight. Prior to taxi, the pilot in 1B went into the cockpit (presumably in the jump seat). After reaching approximately 20,000 feet, the cockpit area was secured and pilot returned to 1B. Midway through the flight, there was a swap of pilots, much like you would see on a long haul international flight.

freshairborne

Everyone sitting in the plane has a contract with the carrier. For passengers, it's the Contract of Carriage. For the crew, it's their CBA. You can bet that if there's a United management person on the plane, they're in FC, per their own contract.

When pilots are scheduled to deadhead, under certain circumstances their contract stipulates that they be in FC. It's rare but it happens. For L-UAL pilots, this was agreed to in 2003. before that, our contract was much more favorable towards deadheading in FC, so what we're talking about now is a more restrictive provision than before 2003. The company agreed to this long before anyone bought their tickets, so if someone gets bumped out of their FC seat, it's because the company was not honoring the pilots' contract when they booked that passenger's seat.

FAB

Weez_1000

This exact thing happened to me a few years ago in SJD-EWR back when Scott was UAInsider. Wife and I was in paid F 1A and 1B. I was downgraded out of 1B. It happened at the ticket counter in SJD, the agent said I needed to contact customer service for compensation and the fare credit. After fighting with them for several days, they offered me a $500 credit for the fare difference and compensation for the downgrade. I was unhappy with that as the fare credit alone was about $400.

I contacted Scott and explained the situation and he sent me two $500 credits and confirmed it was handled incorrectly and apologized.

As a side note I was told to avoid 1B for this exact reason. Can one of the pilots in this thread tell me if 1B is the "normal" seat for deadheading pilots?