left behind because of gate agent

BobDDuck said:
Pretty much the exact same thing happened to me on United at IAD going to Seattle once. Oversold flight and I had filled out the jumpseat paperwork (and was the only jumpseater). The agent was all set to print out my boarding pass when a woman came up the jetway in tears because somebody was in her seat and she thought she wasn't going to get on the flight. The agent told me she'd be right back and went down the jetway. You couldn't actually see the plane from the podium so I just stood there waiting for 10 minutes and when she finally came back she looked at me and asked if she could help me. I showed her the jumpseat form and she goes "oops! there goes the plane now." 3 hours later I got on an American flight to Dallas and then an Alaska flight to Seattle.
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That's why I like the Delta system. No paperwork to fill out and once you are listed as active, it shows a jumpseater on the AWABS. Now, it takes a pilot to do his job and actually see it listed, but that prompts the question, "Where's the jumpseater?"
 
Can all the Union J/s committees work out a system where everyone uses a website or myid travel to put in our info so all we need to do is have the gate agent print a pass? Why is that so hard these days?
 
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Cptnchia said:
That's why I like the Delta system. No paperwork to fill out and once you are listed as active, it shows a jumpseater on the AWABS. Now, it takes a pilot to do his job and actually see it listed, but that prompts the question, "Where's the jumpseater?"
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Exactly.

I've prompted the captains on this a number of times.

I liked it better when we got the AWABS before we handed over the release. That way, it was always nice to tell them, "We either take a delay until you can bring us new paperwork, the jumpseater or both of us sit here and ponder what to do."
 
Derg said:
Exactly.

I've prompted the captains on this a number of times.

I liked it better when we got the AWABS before we handed over the release. That way, it was always nice to tell them, "We either take a delay until you can bring us new paperwork, the jumpseater or both of us sit here and ponder what to do."
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One of the cool things about manual W&B.

"We're not moving until you max us out. Revenue or non-revenue, if you've got another person up there, we're not going to go until you put them on."
 
Had a captain do that once. Told the agent to fill the seats. Agent said no way time to go and closed the door. 10 minutes later still sitting at the gate with no beacon, we get a call from ops wanting to know why we haven't pushed. Boss told them he had an issue with some empty seats and unless the agent could figure out real quick how to fly an airplane they might as well go ahead and put butts in seats. Not too soon later, every seat was full and then we left.
 
Non-benefitted Ready Reserve agents that work as little as once a month with an overly complex and antiquated computer system....so says my retired agent wife and her ATL based former NWA agent sister. Just say'in.
 
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Springer said:
Non-benefitted Ready Reserve agents that work as little as once a month with an overly complex and antiquated computer system....so says my retired agent wife and her ATL based former NWA agent sister. Just say'in.
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I dunno. I think the bigger problem is an organizational failure, especially amongst outsourced stations. I see this all the time with the mainline "partner" that I do 99.9% of my flying for. With very few exceptions, for both us (outsourced regional carrier) and the gate agents (outsourced ground handling company) the only thing that matters is D0. While I'm only educated on the pilot side of the operational issues, I'm sure its the same for the gate agents. There are very few reasons to delay a flight that don't end up counting against us. No catering? Sorry...can't wait five min for them to show up because that counts against us. A couple straggling passengers? Nope, we can't wait 3 minutes for them...they're sleeping in the airport.

There was a Delta commercial a little while back where they pull back into the gate and open up the passenger door to let a guy on crutches on. That used to make me laugh because from my perspective, that would never happen...granted I haven't done any flying under the Delta connection banner since they decided that the actually liked passengers.

Thankfully as far as pilots go, we're usually able to see the forest through the trees and don't mind taking/explaining delays. Gate agents on the other hand, I get the feeling its the opposite. Hence the frequent pinning of delays on "crew late completion of checklist."
 
PhilosopherPilot said:
A quick, "Funny, I didn't realize I had calculated the weight and balance already" makes the point. The dispatcher may run the numbers and say it is planned to be weight restricted, but you'd think the gate agents would know the difference between planned and actual.
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I had a dispatcher list the max takeoff weight out of Key West on the release once.

I politely refused the sign the release until they sent me one without any numbers.

After getting to Key West and running our own numbers compared to the dispatchers numbers from 2 hours prior, we took everyone sitting at the gate without bumping two non-revs.
 
I agree with what I'm reading here. Ground handling usually comes down to two types of agents. Agents who work to travel and generally like what they do and look out for employees because they know what it's like to travel. Agents who work to live just care about keeping their jobs (aka D:0 uber alles) and lump non-revs in with the rest of the "horrid pax" they have to corral on a daily basis, if not treat them worse for having a benefit they don't have.

Again, you get what you pay for. But any of you who have access to United's daily customer service goal can't be surprised.
 
Springer said:
Non-benefitted Ready Reserve agents that work as little as once a month with an overly complex and antiquated computer system....so says my retired agent wife and her ATL based former NWA agent sister. Just say'in.
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It's a fill in the blank template, it takes longer for the CASS photo to display than it does to fill it out. I admit DLTerm isn't the most intuitive system to use, but I've used SABRE, SHARES, PARS, DLTerm, and a few others and quite honestly in their native state none of the 1960 era systems are any more/less user unfriendly than the rest.
 
skyw82 said:
Just found out we're going to agl instead of Msl. Seriously!?
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You're talking about chimes and sterile cockpit, right? Not approach mins? Our sterile cockpit is AGL as well... logical when you're in and out of a lot of very high altitude airports.

My best friend is at US and going through the conversion, too... he can no longer do PAs, their pushback procedures are several cans short of a six pack, and their checklists and operating methods are straight out of the 60s. What a strange strange place...
 
Please don't push 15 prior at a hub if you are not expecting a delay, there may be someone who is running through the terminal because he/she just finished the last leg.
 
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