What part of having formal jumpseat agreements is so bad. The way I understand their problem is that they really do not want to fill the seats with people from airlines that they feel their own people will not use. In a conversation with Eos it was stated that he is more than willing to sign any agreement if it would help one crewmember get home, but that he really did not want to enter into agreements with just everybody, and potentially knock the jumpseater from let's say JetBlue or some other carrier that he knows his crews use all the time, because the seats were already taken.

While you state that this is industry standard I can agree that it would be nice to have just an open policy. Sometimes management just needs some time to get used to a new concept. It does not mean that the employees are not trying to change things from within. One thing I can agree with them on is that the Atlas folks are pushing this on several boards and that I really do not see why I would go out of my way to help them. I had a terrible experience with an Atlas jumpseater that unfortunately we put in first class. It turned out that he smelled horrible and managed to use the F word about every 3 seconds in front of paying pax. I ended up getting a call from my domicile Chief Pilot and spent way to much time dealing with it.

Open jumpseats are a great idea, but my experience is that some folks just do not know how to behave, and give the concept a bad rap.