Check in faster bud. When I was at Envoy I had way more AA guys and gals in my JS going home than any Eagle carrier and I never once had an AA pilot bumped off for an Eagle pilot. And I knew because I was that guy that was religious about checking the G/PALL before push, no jumpseater left behind. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it is not common at all.

You can either set an alarm and check in on time and give yourself a fighting chance at getting a seat, or have some last minute 45 years at the company gate agent’s teenage kid take your seat, and there’s nothing you can do about that. I’d rather have some say in my destiny…..Leaving AA’s system for a seniority based system sucks dude, you really don’t know how good you have it until you lose it. Lighten up man

 

Again true but exquisitely misleading. You can also lose seats to the son of a mainline ramper who was hired two weeks ago.

And in almost every case you will lose out to D2T's who checked in 20 hours after you.

I can see your doll has a bad booboo , but the Eagle pilots aren't the ones who hurt you.

 

Okay question from an outsider who’s used to seniority-based nonrev benefits:

What happens when your intended flight fills up and you have to switch to a different flight last minute, and then you’re clear at the bottom of the standby list? Sure, a 24-hour check-in system sounds great but in my experience of nonrevving, seat availability changes drastically within the last 24 hours until departure. So when you check in the day before the flight and are #1 with 15 seats open, but then the next day you wake up and it’s now oversold. So you’re stuck finding a backup plan, but now you’re dead last on every standby list that day because everyone’s already checked in 24 hours prior.

The seniority-based system can suck when ultra seniors list last minute and bump everyone, but I’m not sure that’s worse than automatically being behind everyone else when Plan A falls through and you have to change plans the day of travel. I’m assuming you aren’t allowed to check in on multiple itineraries at once so that you’re locked in for plans A, B, C and D?

 

Seniority vs time of checkin is a big topic but the pilot union has no control over it.

there are ways to roll your time of checkin to a new itinerary. And my recollection is that you can checkin to multiple flights simultaneously

 

That's probably because there are way more AA pilots than eagle pilots, also don't eagle pilots get like 4x positive space commutes a month?


Hard to check in if you are flying the airplane.

 

You aren’t at the bottom of the list unless you change your city pair.

Your listing rolls to the next flight and your original time of check-in is preserved. IE you will be ahead of anyone else within your same pass category that is listed for the flight you were rolled to.

If you have to switch from a non-stop to a connection, you will get a T (transfer) designation on your listing which also places you above any non-revs who are originating from your layover, regardless of check-in time.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a transparent system with few surprises. I would be adamantly against a seniority-based system, especially when our employee group has a cap on longevity that doesn’t exist in other groups.

 

If you don't get a seat, you can "roll over" to the next flight with your original check-in time preserved. It works very well. It's extremely rare for pilots to get stuck somewhere. Especially because AA pilots have an industry-leading jumpseat reservation system and rules.

 

To be clear for any non-AA pilots reading this...this is a complete non-issue. I've never heard anyone complain about this on the line. Of all the problems that need to be addressed, this is just such a waste of time to discuss.

 

You can also just burn a D1 and leapfrog everyone, as well, assuming there’s no D1s already listed.

 

I commute from a notoriously rough place to MIA and never have any issues with “check in time”… just bid your schedule accordingly. If an eagle guy beats me to it on my own metal when I forgot to list, that’s on me. It’s fair system. What’s not fair is the AA people who list for multiple JSs at one tim and then come to find out they are listed as a D1 on an eagle flight.