Originally Posted by
RockyBoy
JetBlue pilots have always had jetway trades. Worked great. If you gave anything away you lost any guarantee associated with what you gave up, and if you picked anything up, you got paid block.
They actually had a guy in MCO that came up with a program that would use jetway trades to reduce commutes. I know guys in MCO were using it and cutting out more than half of their commutes. Not sure how it worked, but anyone who wanted to participate emailed him their schedules then he put them into an excel program or something. It then spit out who should jetway trade with who to reduce the number of commutes they had.
Back in the stone ages, before computers, before email, before cellphones, I had buddies flying for People Express who lived north of Boston, who were based in Newark, who did jetway trades all the time.
They told me it was pretty much standard ops for the BOS commuters trying to get home, to fly the last legs of the night up to BOS, and go home. Then the next morning new commuters would fly the first leg down to EWR, then sign in for their scheduled trip, vs. ride the jumpseat to EWR. (they were pretty much flying for free, no official trip trade/pay issue)
The company never knew any different, nor did they care, as long as the airplane got to/from BOS/EWR.
In later years, after the Pan Am merger, I believe there was some of that going on with our BOS-LGA 727 shuttle service.