Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
But today is a good day for Susan. There's room for her on the American Eagle flight from Fresno to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, the will-I-get-a-seat drama plays out again. But because many jet aircraft are configured with extra jump-seats that qualified non-revenue employees are welcome to use, Susan's wait is a tad less stressful. Our weary heroine successfully connects with the 9:30, which gets her to Miami at 5:38 p.m. She disembarks and heads to the company operations area at Miami International. Once inside the quiet lounge -- a dark, soundless room filled with recliners -- she falls into a deep sleep.
Three hours later, Susan wakes to the electronic beep of her travel alarm. She leaves the quiet lounge, changes into her uniform, applies make-up, grabs a bite at Burger King or maybe at the sushi bar near Terminal E, then rolls her Travel-Pro to meet her crew at Gate D11. When Susan finally reaches the layover hotel in Rio de Janeiro -- some 30 hours and 6,500 miles after leaving her home in Fresno -- she sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps ...
Thirty-five hours later, she repeats her route in reverse. She departs Rio at 11:15 p.m., arrives in Miami at about 5:30 a.m., changes into civilian clothes, waits at the departure gate for the 7:20 to Los Angeles, and prays there's room on the 10:25 to Fresno. More than once, Susan has been bumped from the 10:25, the 12:35 and the 1:25 in succession. When this happens, she can rent a car, drive home and return the car on her next trip. If she's too tired, she can stay at a nearby hotel.
If you ask me, I think Susan is insane. It's tough enough to make a short commute: Raleigh-New York, San Antonio-Houston, Minneapolis-Chicago. (More than 600 American Airlines pilots and flight attendants live in Atlanta and make the two-and-a-half-hour commute to the company's Miami base.) But Fresno-Los Angeles-Miami? After a duty day that lasts between 10 and 14 hours, the last thing I want to do is get on another airplane, fly five-and-a-half hours to Los Angeles, wait for a connecting flight to Fresno and then, if I'm lucky enough not to be bumped (and conscious enough to drive home from the airport), prepare to do the whole thing all over again in three or four days.
There's no end to the trouble employees will endure to live in a preferred location. I know one flight attendant who rises at 4 a.m. and drives two hours from her small Georgia town to the Atlanta airport. She boards a flight to her Miami base, works three flight segments and then sleeps like a zombie at the layover hotel. I know of a New York-based flight attendant who lives in Lisbon; a Miami-based flight attendant who resides in San Jose, Costa Rica; a Detroit-based attendant who lives with her husband in Amsterdam. I've even heard about one flight attendant who, for a while at least, made the 14-hour commute between Sydney, Australia, and his flight base in Los Angeles.
Junior employees usually don't have enough seniority to hold a "commutable" schedule (one with regular trips that terminate early enough to allow the employee to fly home the same day, and have several days off between trips). In this case, he or she might choose to share a "commuter pad" with crew members caught in the same predicament. These low-rent, threadbare apartments (furnished with not much more than a second-hand sofa, a bevy of twin beds, a coffee pot and a television with bad reception) are located near major airports all across America. Rent is divided among participating commuters -- sometimes as many as nine or 10. A crew member with this arrangement will fly from home-city to base-city the night before a work trip. He'll crash at the commuter pad, and fly his scheduled trip the following morning.
Those without a commuter pad will sometimes fly to base the night before a trip and use their airline discount to check into an airport hotel. Others camp-out at the apartment of a frequent-flying friend. The unlucky ones sleep at the airport. Like weary soldiers assembling the night before battle, they disembark from various commuter flights and trickle into the flight operations area at Kennedy, O'Hare, MIA or maybe LAX. Some wear pajamas. Others sleep in sweats. They dream of higher seniority. They dream of comfortable beds. But if I were sleeping at the airport on a semi-regular basis, I'd be dreaming about moving day.
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