UAL and CAL Jumpseat alliance

sherpa

sherpa

Well-Known Member
United Airlines and Continental Airlines Jumpseat Priority Agreement


The UALMEC has directed your Jumpseat Committee to seek an agreement with the Continental Jumpseat Committee whereby each carrier would grant a higher jumpseat boarding priority to each group of pilots. Your Jumpseat committee has obtained this agreement and will become effective on October 28,2009.

This agreement will be applicable to the mainline operation and will not include the respective express carrier code share flights. On Continental flights, United Pilots will be placed in priority immediately below the Continental pilots and above their express partners. For United flights, Continental pilots will be assigned a J3 classification per the OMC category guidelines in our FOM and will place them above all UAX pilots. Currently, FOM 12.20.11 assigns the J3 category to United interns and requires a cabin seat assignment as well as a meter of authorization. Continental pilots will not be required to have a cabin seat assignment and meter authorization for Jumpseat access. UA flight operations will be issuing similar information regarding the J3 classification in the front page news section of unimatic. The J3 category will be updated in the next FOM revision cycle. United FODM’s have been briefed on this category change too.

With all procedure changes, we caution you there may be some issues that may arise during the initial implementation. If a Continental pilot is encountering a problem obtaining a United Jumpseat, please contact the FODM for immediate assistance and your Jumpseat committee, when time permits. Should you encounter a problem on a Continental flight, please contact your Jumpseat committee via phone and file a JSAP report.


Should you have any additional questions regarding the agreement, please contact the MEC Jumpseat Committee.
 
blee256 said:
Whats the purpose of this? it seems like its sole purpose is too screw its feeder pilots.
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They're pissed at us. A segment of United pilots feel they're entitled to higher priority in our own jumpseats, and UAX as a whole told them to piss off. Apparently that didn't go over too well.
 
Really what does this do other than create a great "micro environment advantage" for them. Reminds me of two lovebirds passing notes in class.
 
This isn't a fair trade for CAL pilots considering moat of UALs flying is done by regionals. It's amazing how many UAL guys count on us to get home at night.
 
kellwolf said:
Two words: Captain's authority.
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It's hard to exercise captain's authority when Gate Agent Authority prevents the captain from knowing there's more than one jumpseater. United's gate agents are theoretically supposed to send down all JS'ers to the plane on UAX flights and let the CA sort it out (according to the United guys I've talked to) but many instituted their own priority. We had United pilots ahead of Skywest pilots on Skywest flights where the Skywest CA had no clue there was an on-line jumpseater there because the agent didn't let them down. That supposedly led to guys calling crew support to get patched through to captains so they could get the jump on their own airline.
 
FlyChicaga said:
This will make getting to and from work just that much harder for me. Great.
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There's always 'merican next door.

Was this the UAL MEC's doing? Despite being in a new "alliance," United is still Continental's competitor. So the fact that they are mainline pilots is a tighter bond or link than the fact that Continental Express and Connection is on the same team?
 
Baronman said:
There's always 'merican next door.
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Have they gone to unlimited JS yet or are they still doing the "X jumpseats in the plane, X jumpseaters" deal? I know our JS committee started a drive to track how many AA guys we had JSing on our planes to try to get a better recip with them.

zmiller4 said:
It's hard to exercise captain's authority when Gate Agent Authority prevents the captain from knowing there's more than one jumpseater. United's gate agents are theoretically supposed to send down all JS'ers to the plane on UAX flights and let the CA sort it out (according to the United guys I've talked to) but many instituted their own priority. We had United pilots ahead of Skywest pilots on Skywest flights where the Skywest CA had no clue there was an on-line jumpseater there because the agent didn't let them down. That supposedly led to guys calling crew support to get patched through to captains so they could get the jump on their own airline.
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It's pretty much the same here. I've gotten in the habit of walking up to the gate and checking myself. Mesaba gate agents are notorious for not letting ANY JSers on just b/c their ops said so. We might have a bazillion pounds to spare on the weight, and their ops will say "No jumpseaters" just because they don't want to deal with it. It was bad out of MSP for a while. I had to lay down the law in DFW a couple of weeks back b/c they wanted to put a NWA guy on my plane ahead of one of our own guys. When the gate agent said "You don't get a say," I played the "9E guy goes or no one goes" card. I might have been a little more lenient if the gate agent hadn't gotten a god complex.
 
Believe it or not, most of the Captains I flew with were pretty damn good about getting up to the gate area around 10-15 minutes prior to push. Usually everything was all buttoned up and ready to go, even on our 30 minute quick turns.

Although, on a few occasions, I found myself looking over to the left and asking "So, what's your jumpseat policy?" Hoping they'd tell me they either 1) Hate taking jumpseaters or 2) them tell me "Oh , lemme go see if we can get someone home or to work."

A few gate agents, usually up in the northern states, thought the seats on the plane were theirs. . .and one particularly - in Allentown - got a nice little ass reaming away from passengers one early morning.

But this little stunt between UAL and CAL just makes me giggle. True doochebaggery
 
surreal1221 said:
A few gate agents, usually up in the northern states, thought the seats on the plane were theirs. . .and one particularly - in Allentown - got a nice little ass reaming away from passengers one early morning.
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Comair guys?? Interesting. They serve us to out of ABE and they are all pretty good people. Even on overnights. Haha.

Gate agents simply dont understand the background of jumpseating and what it means to us and its true purpose.
 
It was a female with an attitude if you get my drift.

This was back about a year ago, and I ended up through Allentown three times my last month and didn't see her again . . .so. . .who knows.
 
You know, almost 100% of the time a UA guy gets bumped off the JS on a flight I'm boarding because an OO guy showed up for it, I hear "Well what the hell I was here first and we're at the same priority on United Express flights".

I usually then say "So if you showed up for a mainline flight and a Skywest guy was already in the jumpseat, he gets to go because you're all under the 'United' banner?". At that point they rarely reply, just storm off.

Whats the big deal with gate agents and jumpseating I always read on here? I've put guys on flights who fly for everybody from Hageland to Sky King. If you're in CASS don't see how you could run into a problem jumpseating. I've even seen it twice when CASS wasn't working for some reason but I was still able to get the guys cabin jumpseat forms to take a seat in the back. So what issues are you guys having?
 
Some gate agents favor certain commuters in certain cities. If the guy doesn't get on the flight, the gate agent might not get cookies or candy next time. That's all I'm gonna say.....
 
I feel a little less confused now because a CAL pilot took a United mainline guy ahead of me a couple weeks ago even though I checked in way before him. He cited this policy and, at the time, I thought it was baloney.

As a IAH-ORD commuter this could cause a couple problems. Oh well...
 
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