How far do you let it go?

GypsyPilot said:
Yep. I watched a half empty Delta flight leave without me at ATL one night. I was at the gate 30 mins early, but had the absolute rudest agent I've ever come across. He told me "SkyWest doesn't have a jumpseat agreement with Delta", and blew me off. Fortunately I was able to walk over to AirTran, where I was treated well and even upgraded to business for a flight that got me home a little later.
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I hope you made some phone calls - I assume this was in the M.M. days.

(at the very least you would have been able to register righteous indignation! :) )
 
I have been told by the DAL pilots that they have no power and mgmt has made that gate agents gods with ultimate authority of who can jumpseat....
 
ChasenSFO said:
That's because most gate agents are idiots when it comes to "how it works". Remember I was a gate agent and regular acting supervisor, and I can't even begin to think of how many times a non-rev or jumpseater only got on a flight because I came flying over in a fit of rage to save the day. Nothing about that job, and I mean nothing, bothered me more than seeing a non-rev get screwed because a gate agent didn't know how to deal with a ZED, or an FA jumpseat forum, or transfering a name from a standby list of another flight, or manually doing a CASS entry for a jumpseater but would try and save face by denying them boarding. Luckily, most of my co-workers knew they could just call me anytime they were unsure of anything and I'd take care of it even if I wasn't supervising.

But from what I saw in my exstensive non-reving, I was a rare breed. I once had US Airways station agreement tickets, which are like ZEDs with a $0 value that can be used on any flight, and almost got stranded in PHL with JordanD because the supervisor didn't know what they were. I had a PHL-SDF segment that was taken by mistake on another flight, I explained that to the gate agent and she told me my DCA-SDF ticket was fine. Next thing you know, they page me to gather my things and get off the flight. The supervisor is standing there with my pass in hand, saying my pass isn't authorized because the city pairs don't match. In the most polite way possible, I ripped him a new one about what a $0 value means, and that even if it WERE a ZED with value, it would be a zone 1 ZED and still interchangable. He knew I was right, was stuttering and embarassed, then asked if I had any other ticket. I showed him all I had was a CLT-SDF pass I didn't use. "Oh! Why didn't you say so?! Have a nice flight...*turns to gate agent* We'll call it a cockpit checks delay".

Know your travel bennies inside out, because the people with the power to get you on usually don't.
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I used to be a crew scheduling supervisor for a regional and I can't tell you how many times I had a crew member call me saying the gate agent wouldn't let them get on a flight. If they were Deadheading or commuting home it didn't matter the gate agent didn't seem to have a clue what was going on. I had to explain to the gate agent on many occasions how to do their job to get my crew members on board. And we even had a few times where we cancelled flights bacause the agent wouldn't let our dh crew on a flight so they couldn't get where they needed to be.
 
flyguy25 said:
I used to be a crew scheduling supervisor for a regional and I can't tell you how many times I had a crew member call me saying the gate agent wouldn't let them get on a flight. If they were Deadheading or commuting home it didn't matter the gate agent didn't seem to have a clue what was going on. I had to explain to the gate agent on many occasions how to do their job to get my crew members on board. And we even had a few times where we cancelled flights bacause the agent wouldn't let our dh crew on a flight so they couldn't get where they needed to be.
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We were always supposed to check for positive space crew members because they often were airborne and wouldn't check in until they rushed to the gate right before departure. Lots of times, gate agents wouldn't pay attention, would fill the plane with revenue standbys, then when the crew members arrived would have to yank million milers off AND compensate them with hotels and travel credits since it was now denied boarding. Happened all the time.

On a related note, if any of you are deadheading and you're checked in, don't be an ass and decide to board from "downstairs" without telling the gate agent. You only make yourself look stupid when the headcount is off, the flight is late, and a passenger is now denied boarding all because you didn't officially board the flight in the computer. It was really the only thing pilots ever did that would piss me off. Well, that and celebrating cancellations in front of the pissed passengers I then had to deal with.
 
ChasenSFO said:
We were always supposed to check for positive space crew members because they often were airborne and wouldn't check in until they rushed to the gate right before departure. Lots of times, gate agents wouldn't pay attention, would fill the plane with revenue standbys, then when the crew members arrived would have to yank million milers off AND compensate them with hotels and travel credits since it was now denied boarding. Happened all the time.

On a related note, if any of you are deadheading and you're checked in, don't be an ass and decide to board from "downstairs" without telling the gate agent. You only make yourself look like stupid when the headcount is off, the flight is late, and a passenger is now denied boarding all because you didn't officially board the flight in the computer. It was really the only thing pilots ever did that would piss me off. Well, that and celebrating cancellations in front of the pissed passengers I then had to deal with.
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Yikes! Yeah, pretty asinine. There's always that 5% moron factor.
 
I was in ABE (IIRC) when I worked a flight inbound and then was positive spaced to my home city on a codeshare partner because I bailed crew sked out. I pull into the gate and my gate agent hands me my boarding pass for the jet leaving a few gates over. I walk over and hand the agent the boarding pass. She gives me a scare look and makes a call. The next think I know alarms are going off and po po is there. They wanted to know I penetrated the sterile area without going through TSA screen. My boarding pass had SSSS on it and it wasn't initialed. In their odd way of thinking, I should have taken the pass, gone out of security, and come back in in since I was flagged as a threat. Thankfully the policy changed shortly after that allow the gate agent to cross out or remove the SSSS. Needless to say it was an entertaining 30 minutes....

I also had another great experience on Mesaba back in the Avro days. I board the and speaking the captain and only FA on board at the time. The PIC tells me to grab a seat in first and the FA has no problem as I am the only one in first and gets me a coffee. 10 minutes or so later the other FA gets on and they board pax. I am the only one is first, shockingly enough. The other FA rudely tells me to get out of first and that she decides who sits there and no one else. So I get my stuff and go sit and back. She sits if first reading a magazine the whole flight and makes the 2nd FA do the entire service in back. I politely mention this to the PIC after the flight and he is not a happy man. He apologized to me and then the last I heard he was have a "pleasant" conversation with someone on the phone about the FA and getting her off the flights.

On a good note the last time I jumped on Spirit, Southwest, and FedEx I was treated like royalty.
 
Bandit_Driver said:
I was in ABE (IIRC) when I worked a flight inbound and then was positive spaced to my home city on a codeshare partner because I bailed crew sked out. I pull into the gate and my gate agent hands me my boarding pass for the jet leaving a few gates over. I walk over and hand the agent the boarding pass. She gives me a scare look and makes a call. The next think I know alarms are going off and po po is there. They wanted to know I penetrated the sterile area without going through TSA screen. My boarding pass had SSSS on it and it wasn't initialed. In their odd way of thinking, I should have taken the pass, gone out of security, and come back in in since I was flagged as a threat. Thankfully the policy changed shortly after that allow the gate agent to cross out or remove the SSSS. Needless to say it was an entertaining 30 minutes....

I also had another great experience on Mesaba back in the Avro days. I board the and speaking the captain and only FA on board at the time. The PIC tells me to grab a seat in first and the FA has no problem as I am the only one in first and gets me a coffee. 10 minutes or so later the other FA gets on and they board pax. I am the only one is first, shockingly enough. The other FA rudely tells me to get out of first and that she decides who sits there and no one else. So I get my stuff and go sit and back. She sits if first reading a magazine the whole flight and makes the 2nd FA do the entire service in back. I politely mention this to the PIC after the flight and he is not a happy man. He apologized to me and then the last I heard he was have a "pleasant" conversation with someone on the phone about the FA and getting her off the flights.

On a good note the last time I jumped on Spirit, Southwest, and FedEx I was treated like royalty.
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Thats ballsy of the FA. What if you were a fed doing a line check or a company person doing a line check? It would have been awesome to see that result. Is it just me or does there seem to be an influx of bitter, rude FAs then polite ones? I really havent had a decent impression of any in quite some time.
 
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