Buddy Pass Changes at UAL

This is what Air France and other European carriers do.

Employee must travel with their "buddy/non-eligible family members). Makes sense to me. Friends were always bugging be. I said we dont do buddy passes. I have to travel with you, its my employee benefit, not yours. Are you paying for my hotel in Paris or what? I can get us a discount too with my benefits.

Makes sense... IT'S AN EMPLOYEES BENEFIT, NOT YOUR BUDDY's!

This program is better for the employee (off-duty or on-duty) and company.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Typical airline management: punish the masses for the sins of the few. And then they wonder why they have labor unrest.
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Let's see, 12 designated Buddies X 60,0000+ employees with an average load factor of nearly 90%. The Buddy Pass first started to allow single people to travel with their companion and has escalated to what it is today.
 
As a United primary friend I love the system, especially with my own login. I'm about to renew for 2015 so I can get over to the U.S. to do some flying.

Looks like I won't be able to book the night before but can still fly around the system. With Delta reducing service with their tie in with Virgin, United is the best to get across the pond.

Alex.
 
All this hate about buddy passes I'll never understand, when I had UAL buddy passes I used every last one each year. Never regretted it, I refused to book people on full flights and very close connections(and bad wx if possible), and if I thought they'd run into problems, I gave them my log in and taught them how to solve their own problems. In the off season(you know, right now) it's pretty easy to find wide open flights. There were times I used 5 or 6 passes at once and got everyone first class to/from Hawaii. Worked great, and buddy passes were a great asset. This really sucks for everyone with UA bennies. Selling buddy passes isn't new, people do it at every airline I'm sure and they're taken care of on an individual basis. Why punish the masses? Then again, why set a customer satisfaction goal if its going to be under 30% and a system wide on-time goal of less than 60%? It's a strange company these days...

Springer said:
Let's see, 12 designated Buddies X 60,0000+ employees with an average load factor of nearly 90%. The Buddy Pass first started to allow single people to travel with their companion and has escalated to what it is today.
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90%? I see the loads of everything going in/out of SFO at work on all the carriers. I'd say 40% is more like it right now. Again, "off season".
 
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Leave it to a bunch of pilots--the only people who could come up with something FREE, then parse it into endless permutations of games, schemes, and all other sorts of Tom Foolery, all the while bitching up a metric mountain of loquacious blather.:biggrin:
 
cezzna said:
Leave it to a bunch of pilots--the only people who could come up with something FREE, then parse it into endless permutations of games, schemes, and all other sorts of Tom Foolery, all the while bitching up a metric mountain of loquacious blather.:biggrin:
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First off, it's not "free" but rather a negotiated benefit that in many contracts is considered part of your compensation.

Secondly, it's probably not the pilots messing it up. Historically FAs have been the biggest problem with pass travel abuse, followed by gate agents.
 
I know at my airline, there were a lot of people getting jobs at many levels of the business and going into the "business" of selling buddy passes.
 
X-Forces said:
Yep, Shotgun discipline!

One thing I don't miss about being in uniform.
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Civilian (who wears a uniform to work) here; the innocent suffer along with the guilty all the same at an airline. (___) policy exists because someone, somewhere, did it wrong/abused their privileges/etc.
 
CFI A&P said:
Maybe this guy didn't get the memo about abusing privileges.

http://www.barnstormers.com/classified_985158_Ferry Pilot w_Airline Bennies.html
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So this genius just posted all over the internet that "Hey I am an Northwest/Delta employee, and I am willing to abuse my travel benefits so you won't have to pay the normal costs of transporting me to/from the ferry job. Hire me!" And as an added bonus he gave his name and contact information to make it extra easy for his airline employer to track him down.

That said, there's no punishment here. Nothing's been taken away. They still have buddy passes. The employee just has to travel with the buddy. Isn't that the spirit behind a buddy pass anyway? A means for an airline employee to take a trip with a friend he might otherwise not get to do?

Instead of getting angry with the company, police your own. If you know of someone abusing pass privileges. them, tell 'em to knock it off before they screw it up for everybody.
 
Sort of related, United swiftly added $25/leg domestic and $50/leg international segment fees to all Skywest employees. Until now, Skywest managed to strike a deal with UA where they didn't have to pay these fees which many(if not all) other UAX carriers were paying for several years now. I wonder what caused that to happen, trouble in paradise? Had to happen right when I started a series of Brasilia photography trips too, ugh.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Sort of related, United swiftly added $25/leg domestic and $50/leg international segment fees to all Skywest employees. Until now, Skywest managed to strike a deal with UA where they didn't have to pay these fees which many(if not all) other UAX carriers were paying for several years now. I wonder what caused that to happen, trouble in paradise? Had to happen right when I started a series of Brasilia photography trips too, ugh.
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So.. Every time you fly you pay a fee? Why bother working for a contractor anymore.
 
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