Originally Posted by
twebb
This happened in Lax, and I know not all the gate agents are bad. I did manage to make friends with one of the gate agents there, he actually understands how things work and has been great to work with. Unfortuntently he left right before all this happened. I also think what airline you try to fly on makes a huge difference. Alaska Air had extremely friendly gate agents and pilots at both airports we went to.
As a SkyWest pilot, I am sorry to hear that happened to you, b/c those gate agents working our flights are all SkyWest employees (correct me if I am wrong about that).
Anyway, I have been through LAX a lot recently, and while we have some great folks there, we unfortunately also have some not-so-professional individuals working those gates. 4 weeks ago we were leaving for TUS, with 60-something PAX for a 50-seater, but 11 of those were non-rev's. I was not upstairs, however one of our dead-heading pilots got on and described the gate situation. From what it sounded like, the gate personnel had made a complete mess of things and were being quite rude about it. We ended up leaving with 3 or 4 open seats, and no non-rev's. I guess an agent had made a comment that they didn't want to deal with the extra hassle of working in non-rev's for the flight. I tell this because I can understand what your experience might have been like, and I hope you follow the others' advice as well and make sure you contact your jumpseat coordinator.