Separate non-rev booking site

[gulfcoast1]

What corruption are you talking about? Checkin times cannot be altered and if someone is given a seat out of order, the agent is subject to disciplinary action. I have been on many flights that were full and at least one crewmember almost always takes a jumpseat if it will help another nonrev get on. Management said at a recent crew meeting that all allegations of improper activity are investigated. I don't see anything wrong with an agent asking a crewmember if they will accept a jumpseat but they have every right to say no as much as I wish they would say yes.

 

[jimntx]

I've also had a gate agent ask me to take a jumpseat when I was deadheading A1D to an assignment. But, as you said, I would have probably done it except the flight I was going to be working was an SEA-LGA all-nighter. Eww!

 

[eolesen]

Oh, I do the same, but that's not what I was talking about. You said, "they all know the consequences." Judging from your reply to my post the "they" you are talking about is the users of your passes. I was talking about the employees themselves and questioning the statement that they all know the consequences.

You can't fix stupid. The rules are out there for everyone to read, and it's no different than trying to plead ignorance for having someone else punch the timeclock for you or "borrowing" $10 from the change fund for lunch. People who run afoul of travel program rules deserve the consequences.

 

[UPNAWAY]

guys go talk to some of your former US counterparts we had this for over 5 years, you will love it and none of the fears you are expressing ever materilized. My Dad the least tech savy guy ever, figured this out and travelled all the time, most of the time I didn't even know. I'd call him on some random weekend and he was in the Carbibean or Europe. Guest cannot use extra passes, because you put how many you want in their bank. All the rules are there for them to see (behavior at gate, dress code etc.), as well as the booking totals and their place on the list. The also had travel advisories, so if they try and book Europe in the summer the would get a red warning about recent loads and even poassible weight restrictions. I had 2 folks that got well versed in non-reving that got most of my passes. For the occasional one offs, I booked them and then gave them a link to pay for it.

 

[jimntx]

I suspect that US Airways was more generous with buddy passes than AA. I'm allowed 10 people on my travel list. I do not get enough D3 passes (I don't have anyone who qualifies for D1/D2) for each of them to make 1 trip a year. It would be different if they just made 1 D3 good for a round-trip instead of 2 D3s.

 

[UPNAWAY]

At US we had 8 RT, so that was the same. But at HP at one time we got 40 guest passes a year. 10 every quarter. You could wallpaper a small room with them we had so many.

 

[jimntx]

Did you have the (what I call) Trusted Traveler feature where you had to provide information in advance for the people you wanted to give passes to? The part of that I really don't like is the fact that once on the list, they cannot be removed for a year.

There is someone on my list I know here in Dallas. He's a nice guy. I'm not worried about his behavior. He's unemployed right now, and I gave him a pass to travel to Iowa to attend a family funeral. Not a problem, but this was a one-off event. I would rather not have him taking up space on my list of 10 people until almost Christmas this year.

And, it's not like maintaining the list requires any effort on the part of anyone at Headquarters. Maintenance of the list is up to me to add and subtract people.

 

[UPNAWAY]

No for Guest passes you could add or delete as you like? Not sure why there is a limit? For Family and Companions those could only be done once a year (at benefit enrollment) or with a life event (i.e. Birth or death).

 

[IORFA]

It lessens the issue we had in the past where people would sell their D3's.

 

[jimntx]

Well, that makes sense. Leave it to some of our fellow employees to screw things up for all of us.

 

[JREwing]

It lessens the issue we had in the past where people would sell their D3's.

With all of the personal information about a D3 you need to provide, not a paper D3 pass and very soon your D3 has to pay upfront for a pass I doubt there would be as much "abuse" of selling D3's. I for one would not be giving an unknown D3 access to any part of an AA travel site to list themselves whether or not there are safeguards in place.

 

[jimntx]

Well, yes. But, if you read the Travel policy regarding "buddy passes," it states clearly that you are personally responsible for the behavior of the people you give passes to--including how they dress to travel. In fact, IIRC you have to click on a button that says you agree to this restriction. But, evidently some people took the idea that because the company gave them the passes, "those passes belong to me, and I can do anything I want with them."

 

[UPNAWAY]

Back in PHX in the 40 passes a year days, those where paper and there was a story of a flea market selling them for $99. The people thought that would get them on the plane when the showed up at the airport and found out the had to spend another $100+ to get a ticket they got really upset. Plus of course the rules didn't allow for selling them either. But since the are trackable it was fairly easy to find the employees giving the guy the passes (He probabaly paid them $20 each or some such) and the guy at the flea market. That probabaly didn't last more than a month or two and was the only real big abuse story I ever heard.

 

[eolesen]

Bartering and selling buddy passes at flea markets, newspaper classifieds, internet bulletin boards, forums, and Craigslist has been a problem for the 31 years I've been in the industry, and probably longer than that...

 

[Jester]

Those paper passes were just a recipe for problems... I recall one story of a ramp agent giving a pass to a friend who gave it to another friend and a friend of the next friend, and the eventual pass traveler was a kook who pretending to be a Federal Air Marshall walking around the aisle demanding to inspect passengers' identifications.

I think the ramper kept his job as he claimed he didn't sell the pass and didn't know anything about the pseudo Federal agent, but lost his travel privileges for six months.