Pretty much the case, imho. Side issue = Is the adolescent, BS... jumpseat crap still ongoing? Other than providing yet more pathetic behavioral displays, suitable only for generating the fullest contempt; such doesn't effect me directly, and I'll always offer properly professional courtesy to any other pilots on "my" plane, but..I'm curious as to whether anyone out there, that was doing such teenaged-level BS, has actually "gwown up" any of late.
Check this out, from the ALPA website:
Change remained the main theme of the Executive Board’s 102nd regular meeting, held today in Tyson’s Corner, Va.
Additionally, the executive board directed the ALPA National Jumpseat Committee to review the current policy that would give ALPA pilots priority to obtain access to cockpit jumpseats. The Committee is expected to report to the September 2008 Executive Board with any improvements of suggestions. Stay tuned.
On the surface, this smacks of a thinly veiled retaliation against the US Airways pilots. Does ALPA National really want to get involved in a national jumpseat war? I would expect that the first time a US pilot is denied jumpseat because of some "ALPA First" policy, the US (or SW, or JB, or UPS) jumpseat policy will become "ALPA Last".
The East Coast Shuttle is a veritable crew bus for off-line pilots, ALPA and non-ALPA. So if this policy is enforced, the JetBlue pilot who shows up at the US Shuttle gate in DCA at departure time gets the jumpseat instead of the United pilot who has been waiting patiently and politely for two hours. Is that what they want?
Or how about the US West pilot who relies on an ALPA RJ to get to and from PHX from a smaller out-station? So now a United Express pilot has priority over that US pilot on a US Express flight, because the former happens to be an ALPA member. (Remember, most of the regional airlines are ALPA.)
Once again, it would appear that petty politics at the top will be played, with no thought of how it might affect the line schmucks who actually carry the mail and pay the freight.
Then again, what does the EC care? They never fly, so they never commute. And when they have their bi-monthly soirées at five-star resorts (which the US pilots are no longer paying for), I'm sure they travel positive space first class.
On the dime of the line pilot whose commute to work they are trying to make even more difficult.