PilotJim

It looks like AA is rescinding their ZED agreements with Frontier and Allegiant beginning May 1st. They already don’t have an agreement with Spirit. Are there any AA folks who this bothers? It seems to me that there is no benefit to cutting ZED agreements and it only serves to decrease non-rev options for everybody involved. Considering that OAL non-revs will almost always be a lower boarding priority, there is no benefit to cutting these agreements.

Are there any people here who would help by sending a message to their travel department to request that these ZED agreements be maintained (or even expanded in the case of Spirit)? I think it benefits us all to have as many non-rev options as possible, but campaigning from the outside is unlikely to have any impact. If AA is going to listen to anybody, it would be probably be their own employees.

full of luv

Huh, when 9/11 hit and pilots were getting furloughed in droves, AA was FIRST to cut off jump seat access (well not allowed by new TSA actions) but also cut off all non-rev benefits pretty quickly, to their OWN PILOTS who were probably COMING BACK to work for them in the future.

Delta allowed non-rev access to furloughed pilots, not sure about UAL as we didn't have any furloughed UAL pilots back in our squadron.

UAL used to cut off CASS to mil leave pilots after 30 days so that was fun watching a pilot come off of 60 days of active duty and if they did any drills, they'd have to bum a buddy pass from a friend to get back to their base of work to check in. After the CAL merger, UAL dropped this policy.

Varsity

Wasn't always the case. Mil pilots notoriously abused the system and lost pass access on .mil leave as a result.

flydc

I use Frontier all the time. This is a bummer. Do you have an email address of someone to complain to?

PilotJim

I don’t, unfortunately. I don’t know how your employee website is organized, but I would imagine there’s an email address for the travel benefits people somewhere on there.

dynap09

This was a nice perk for the ULCC pilots. The pay / work rules not that great, but you did get access to a huge zed fare network.

Could AA be cutting the agreements to avoid subsiding competitors competing with much lower labor and other costs?

astaz

As an Allegiant pilot this is disappointing. We have AA non-revs all the time out of Mesa heading up to Montana or the Dakotas, a lot of whom aren’t pilots and can’t jumpseat. So I don’t feel like it was simply a one way street. We were told by the travel department that AA didn’t want to renew the agreement, and no indication as to a reason why. I figure there is always a second side to a story, but I would assume it’s beneficial to both sides to attempt to reach a new agreement.

cactusmike

This is another deterioration in our travel benefits for our families. Although, to be truthful, it’s pretty much impossible to nonrev on American anyway. Our flights are generally packed and ZED travelers have a tough time getting on.

AA management doesn’t really give a crap about ‘our team members’. They raised the buddy pass (another useless benefit) rates as well and dumping these ZED agreements. It’s cheaper to get a regular ticket on the clearinghouse web sites like Cheapoair.com or Orbitz.
Buddy passes are for people you hate.

flydc

Send your concerns to [email protected]

chrisreedrules

I will second this. I usually show my friends who want to use a buddy pass the cost difference between flying standby with a D3 or just buying a confirmed ticket with Spirit or Frontier etc. It’s usually almost about the same.

Anymore I usually just buy my wife a ticket when we travel for vacation unless it’s long-haul international. Ever since the Basic Economy fares became a thing and with the way AA over-sells most flights it’s a serious pain to travel for pleasure. And half the time I’m on the jump while commuting for work.

Mostly I wish that AA would up-gauge certain markets. Lots of full regional jets on some routes. Would be great to see a 320 or 73 to alleviate the loads sometimes.