New Pass Travel System
 

It sounds like the new pass travel system is beginning today for United. The biggest change is retirees with 25+ years seniority will now go below all active employees (even those with 6 months of service). This is a major blow for current retirees and all of us who plan on actually retiring someday.

My plan was always to retire early and travel the world on my retiree pass travel at the highest seniority level. Now it seems like I will be staying until I reach age 65 (or whatever the mandatory retirement age gets raised to) in order to keep my high seniority pass travel. Looks like those of you on the low end of the seniority list will be stuck with us senior guys for even longer now. I am sure there are other pilots who plan on staying around longer now to keep their pass travel benefits. We are our own worst enemies sometimes. :(

On the other hand, retirees have a little more time to spend at the airport waiting for a flight than those of us trying to get somewhere with our families on a week off from work.

Active trumps inactive.

Why don't you use your retirement to BUY a ticket? Staying at a job until you're on the verge of death in order to keep standby travel privileges seems foolish to me.

A study was done on the actual Non-Rev travel that retirees do and not as much as you would think. ( The joint CAL/UAL pass committee did the study ) It was designed to be a smack in the face of UAL retirees. I'd guess you would be in favor of pilot and F/A commuters having a higher priority when commuting to work - A very bad Idea!

Can you find/name any other industry in which retired employees receive better benefits than active employees?

DAL is all active empls. over retirees, but above express type carriers on DAL metal.

No, but I also think it's wrong for a retiree or some non-employee dependent to get on before an active employee trying to commute to work using normal regular pass classifications. If I'm trying to get to work or go on vacation, some college kid of an employee hired a year before me shouldn't be able to bump me an active employee.

This has already been hashed out. What's done is done and nothing will change it at this point. Surveys and group meetings were held to determine this.

Don't have to look to far. United gave a higher boarding priority and free passes( I think ). It was like giving them a $50 watch. I understand after the first year of retiring that most used the passes very little. It's not that big of a thing in the scope of things. Just a poke in the eye of the retirees. I think their boarding priority is equal with active employees when using Vacation passes. I think they get the same number of vac passes as active employees.

I've traveled the world enough as an active employee.

I'm not maxing out my 401(k) and Roth so that I can have free travel when I retire. In fact, travel benefits are not even on the radar.

Personally, and everyone's goal is different, I would like to someday own a Porsche so that when I retire I can "fly" down my local roads.