It’s Not Worth Showing Off


“…selling or buying trips is banned, however, flight attendants were allegedly using codewords like cookies, hugs, and kisses to indicate to their coworkers that they were only offering their trip in exchange for cash.”

Craigslist-tier code."

"....... 20 🌹..."
 

“…selling or buying trips is banned, however, flight attendants were allegedly using codewords like cookies, hugs, and kisses to indicate to their coworkers that they were only offering their trip in exchange for cash.”

Craigslist-tier code.
Ours sell their trips and seem to be open about it. Company doesn’t care. FAs are though timid about telling us if wiggling the block time will help them out with triggering their additional pay, etc.
 

“…selling or buying trips is banned, however, flight attendants were allegedly using codewords like cookies, hugs, and kisses to indicate to their coworkers that they were only offering their trip in exchange for cash.”

Craigslist-tier code.


Honestly I don’t see a problem. How one bids is one’s own business. And what one does with their trips is also their own business. Is this shady? Yeah. Fireable offense? If the flight was covered, who cares. If it’s a desirable trip, one was senior enough to hold it. Whether one choses to fly it or give it away to someone is a personal business. Right?
 

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Honestly I don’t see a problem. How one bids is one’s own business. And what one does with their trips is also their own business. Is this shady? Yeah. Fireable offense? If the flight was covered, who cares. If it’s a desirable trip, one was senior enough to hold it. Whether one choses to fly it or give it away to someone is a personal business. Right?
Of course you feel this way.
 
Honestly I don’t see a problem. How one bids is one’s own business. And what one does with their trips is also their own business. Is this shady? Yeah. Fireable offense? If the flight was covered, who cares. If it’s a desirable trip, one was senior enough to hold it. Whether one choses to fly it or give it away to someone is a personal business. Right?
At every other level of the airline industry, people pay to get shifts covered. Sometimes hundreds of dollars. Nothing new.
 
Honestly I don’t see a problem. How one bids is one’s own business. And what one does with their trips is also their own business. Is this shady? Yeah. Fireable offense? If the flight was covered, who cares. If it’s a desirable trip, one was senior enough to hold it. Whether one choses to fly it or give it away to someone is a personal business. Right?

At every other level of the airline industry, people pay to get shifts covered. Sometimes hundreds of dollars. Nothing new.

I remember the story my older SWA friends told me of the FO who would take/trade any trip you wanted in order to not have to fly with a crappy Capt. And would do it for a nominal fee, no questions asked and no matter how crappy of a Capt he would have to endure. Apparently, he was popular enough, as seemingly a number of FOs sought out his service.

As I understand it, there was a bid day, and you had to be ready at your computer and ready to bid, as the “bidding cartel” who had seniority, would come in and eat up the good trips to trade amongst themselves, leaving the garbage trips or crap Capt trips for everyone else. The senior FO here, would be happy to take care of all your scheduling problems including flying with crap Capts, for his fee. And business was good in that realm.
 
Honestly I don’t see a problem. How one bids is one’s own business. And what one does with their trips is also their own business. Is this shady? Yeah. Fireable offense? If the flight was covered, who cares. If it’s a desirable trip, one was senior enough to hold it. Whether one choses to fly it or give it away to someone is a personal business. Right?
“Give it away”, or sell it?

Maybe ask the pilot a few seniority numbers lower how he’d feel about having to pay cash for a destination that he wants to see, when the slightly higher seniority pilot that doesn’t want to go there scoops it up as a business proposition?

Nice.
 
“Give it away”, or sell it?

Maybe ask the pilot a few seniority numbers lower how he’d feel about having to pay cash for a destination that he wants to see, when the slightly higher seniority pilot that doesn’t want to go there scoops it up as a business proposition?

Nice.


I understand. It still respected seniority for him to get the trip award in the first place. Anyone senior to him could have gotten it. Juniors couldn’t. Now if he wants to sell that trip away, IMO it’s his perogative.



I will say, though, that this only exists because there’s a market for it. Why not call out the people trying to actually PAY to go to a certain location for work? Thats just as messed up. Theres not a city in the world I’d pay someone extra for just to say I got that layover now.
 
I still dont understand why anyone would pay for someone elses trip.

I mean, if I had the money to spend, a LHR trip seems a lot nicer than doing multiple ORD-LGA turns in a day.

I was talking to a Qantas pilot not too long ago who was telling me their widebody seniority list is "revolving". There's a set period of time, six months or something, and everyone advances up the seniority list every month until you get to the top and then you fall back to the bottom. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Sucks if you're an OG and you can hold something near the top in a traditional scheme, but I guess it's nice if you're a low guy and you're not stuck flying somewhere undesirable for months(or years) on end.
 
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I mean, if I had the money to spend, a LHR trip seems a lot nicer than doing multiple ORD-LGA turns in a day.

I was talking to a Qantas pilot not too long ago who was telling me their widebody seniority list is "revolving". There's a set period of time, six months or something, and everyone advances up the seniority list every month until you get to the top and then you fall back to the bottom. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Sucks if you're an OG and you can hold something near the top in a traditional scheme, but I guess it's nice if you're a low guy and you're not stuck flying somewhere undesirable for months(or years) on end.

Do they seem to like this arrangement, given that it’s all they have had? Or did they used to have a traditional seniority arrangement at one time?
 
I’m just saying, they are exercising seniority. What they choose to do with their trips is their own business.

Predatory towards ones peers…
Im not sure why this take of yours irks me more than others…but it does. Sure, pull that ladder right on up after you've ascended the next level.

We had senior FOs at my shop do the same, bid the “destination” layovers only to trade them back via the board asking for more credit…

Its almost like a century has taught some of us nothing about camaraderie in this profession.
 
Predatory towards ones peers…
Im not sure why this take of yours irks me more than others…but it does. Sure, pull that ladder right on up after you've ascended the next level.

We had senior FOs at my shop do the same, bid the “destination” layovers only to trade them back via the board asking for more credit…

Its almost like a century has taught some of us nothing about camaraderie in this profession.

If I’ve learned anything this is how guys like @Cherokee_Cruiser, @Skåning and @word302 operate.

They get so upset and go for the jugular when anyone mentions something that could be improved about their precious reserve system because they are benefiting from it financially.

In addition we actually had cool destinations in our airlines network the nice trips would absolutely be for sale. But we don’t. So that isn’t a dynamic we’ve seen. So far.
 
If you get busted selling/buying a trip at my shop, well, it’s going to fare poorly.
 
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