Originally Posted by
Adlerdriver
If you bother to read the OP's scenario, you'd see there weren't any different flights.
Okay genius...If you bother to read the OP's scenario, or even the quote you posted, you'd see that when he looked at deviating, he found that "1st class options were virtually nil." That doesn't mean
NO first class flights were available on
ANY airline at
ANY price out of MEM.
Bothering to read further...The OP went on to state that after he arrived in ORD, there were no seats available on the scheduled flight or other airlines. The key point is that he was now in ORD, and there were no 1st class seats available out of ORD. Perhaps he should have been booked through some other city.
Originally Posted by
Adlerdriver
He had a secondary and there were 5 days from official assignment of the trip to deadhead day, so it was going to be tight anyway. He failed to be proactive and at some point even closer to the day of travel, he "discovered"
scheduling didn't buy the ticket yet
(Global Travel buys tickets, not scheduling - but whatever).
So, when someone finally got around to actually buying a ticket to get this guy to ANC, there weren't ANY on the fights in the original pairing.
Hint: if you can't find a flight on which to deviate through the normal deviating process on PFC or going directly to the airlines, chances are Global Travel isn't going to have any better luck.
Now they had to revise the pairing to reflect whatever last minute flight they were able to find that actually had ANY seat - first class was a pipe dream at that point. Whatever requirements you want in the contract Busboy wouldn't have mattered in this situation.
The OP didn't help himself out and IMO seems inexperienced with deviation and FedEx airline travel in general. There was exactly ONE flight from ORD to ANC non-stop on his day of travel. 16 first class seats. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving. Showing up at the airport during the connection and trying to get an upgrade was laughable. No wonder the gate agent scoffed. His only chance was to start the process the week prior on Wednesday night when the VTOs were official. Even then it might have been tough, but the chances were way higher than asking for an upgrade at the gate. If he really wanted to deviate, he probably could have started even sooner since the VTOs usually get built a few days before that and you can see which trip you have early. He could have had a ticket in hand before Global Travel even started looking.
All this talk about one of our pilots having to be proactive in making sure the company books him into the seats agreed to in our CBA, on a scheduled flight, is ludicrous. They scheduled it, they should be held responsible for making it happen. Or, revise the trip's deadhead, if that's what it takes. They certainly don't have a problem revising our trips after assignment, if it's to their advantage, do they?
Years ago, they could book flights in advance with a "dummy" pilot. I'm not referring to you in general, by that. But, the seat would be booked and held until they could put an actual name on it. Can they still do that? I don't know. But, I would think it would be negotiable in their airline contracts.
Of course, that might be more expensive. And, we know this company probably couldn't afford it.