Back in the day...

Delta pilots were not allowed to ride on their own jumpseats up until Sept. of 1996. The reasoning we were told for that was, it was a 'non-rev benefit' available only to the pilots, and not available to the rest of the employees. Now, you have to remember, this line of thinking (what's good for one is good for all) came out of the 1930's, and was supported by the CEO's of yesterday, not the robber barons money grubbers of today.

Also, Delta had many more pilot bases prior to 1996, (BOS, MIA, ORD, MSY, IAH, DFW) so there really was no need to commute very far unless you wanted to live out west. When I was a new hire, I was based in MIA and commuted to BOS on Eastern's jumpseats to fly with the Guard. I spent a lot of time in their cockpits apologizing for Delta's No Jumpseat policy.

Only a few guys would commute long term, and then usually only in their final 3 years, to fly International out of ATL, to boost their FAE for retirement, and they would be senior enough to non-rev to ATL to do it easily as our average load factors were in the 65-70% range back then.

In 1996, Delta decided to close all those bases (listed above). The way the pilots were able to convince Mgt to let us use the jumpseat was, it would save the company millions in moving costs if they allowed us to commute, rather than pay each displaced pilot an average of $25,000 in moving expenses if we were NOT allowed to use it, and we all had to move to ATL. I took the paid moving expenses, went from NH to FL, and have been commuting to ATL ever since.

The FA's were later allowed to use theirs to commute too, although they kept several of those bases open as FA bases. MIA, BOS and I think ORD all still have FA bases there, as well as MCO.