As a fNWA guy, my opinion is that abusing it is using the policy as an excuse to commute irresponsibly knowing that someone will bail you out if you try to get to work on a bad weather day and only leave yourself one backup or try to commute into Atlanta the day before the SEC championship without a jumpseat booked... or whatever. I didn't see much of that at Northwest and I lived in a city full of commuters where the jumpseats were all pretty much taken about 5 minutes after the booking window opened. Most guys commute as responsibly as ever... policy or no policy.

However... there's always the 2%....

I also thought the preamble was a little condescending, but this is a huge change in policy for about 60% of the entire post-merger pilot group. I think a caution to use the policy sparingly lest it be taken away isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, it was very poorly worded.