Originally Posted by
BlueMoon
Possible, depends on how far the alternate is and how many bags. Also depends on the agent, maybe she didn't want to wait for the crew to crunch the numbers.
Also, I know my former company (comair) would send a max pax load to the gate agents. It usually accounted for way more bags and we could usually take more pax than listed.
However, sometimes gate agents don't listen to us. When I was JFK based me and a DL were trying to jumpseat to dtw on comair. WX was garbage and the alternate was Toledo...There were also 4 revenue standby's waiting for a seat and 5 empty seats. The gate agent wouldn't board any of us because of the max pax load that she had on our computer even though operations was on the radio saying the CA said he could take a full load plus a js. Eventually the CA said he wasn't leaving til he saw the JS'er. She started swearing in front of gate 25 and she begrudgingly filled up the plane with all of us. That was pretty much standard for JFK.
FWIW... we've been ordered NOT to "crunch" numbers any more, due to the delay game. If the agent asks us if we can carry more folks, we are supposed to tell them to ask control.
Why? Probably because when we're short on time and trying to get folks on, many gate agents put the delay on crew after we attempt to accommodate them and the pax. Since the company wants to avoid delays, we just leave the answer to control. If the flight says weight restricted 45 pax / 1470 bags, that's probably what we'll go with at most.
Unfortunate that it has come to this to ensure we don't get dinged for performance, but that's the nature of the beast I suppose.