Southwest Airlines Flight Attendants Are Furious That Mechanics Will Soon Be Able To Travel In Jumpseats On Full Flights

Southwest Airlines employees were “up in arms” over a March change making only flight attendants eligible to travel as non-revenue passengers in cabin jumpseats.

The airline would have 1-3 spare flight attendant jumpseats on each aircraft, and it used to be that employees like reservations and gate agents could use them when no passenger seats remained and they wanted to travel. However, these seats were taken away from these employees and were being reserved for flight crew travel only.

The change was made in response to flight attendant union concerns that non-crew employees occupying a cabin jumpseat can disrupt flight attendant duties, and that only flight attendants are prepared to perform emergency evacuation duties.

However, Southwest Airlines mechanics pursued grievance, and Southwest Airlines backed off this change – returning access to jump seats to all airline employees.

• The Southwest Airlines mechanics union contract is clear that their members must be treated “no less favorable than other Employee groups” for space-available jumpseat access. Oops.

• But the airline didn’t want to create a carveout just for mechanics. That’s toxic to other employees. So they simply reversed the jump seat restriction.

• Still, they couldn’t validate the union’s safety arguments in March and then ignore them now, so they’re going to require everyone who wants to nonrev in these seats to take a training on them first.

According to the mechanics union,

The Union was scheduled to arbitrate the jumpseat grievance this week in Dallas. However, that arbitration has been canceled as the ALRs, with Legal, finalized a settlement agreement that will return cabin jumpseat access to AMFA members. Like the cockpit jumpseat, members will need to take a short CBT annually to occupy the cabin jumpseat. The Company will make good faith efforts to implement this within 45 days, but in no event later than September 1. A more detailed update will be released from the ALRs in the coming days.

Meanwhile, the flight attendants union is not happy.

Before the March change, Southwest’s spare jumpseats were available for employee nonrevving. When a flight was full, an employee could still travel by taking an unused cabin jumpseat. That’s important because nonrev commuting is a major part of employee life. Reportedly nearly one-third of Southwest flight attendants commute by air, so limiting the benefit to them was especially valuable but it was also a real limitation on benefits enjoyed by others.

The argument that the flight attendants union made, though, wasn’t self-interest. They contend that the cabin jumpseat is in flight attendant workspace, near emergency equipment and exits, and non-crew employees aren’t trained on emergency procedures like flight attendants are. Of course, the FAA doesn’t bar non-crew employees from cabin jumpseats so they don’t consider it a safety concern.

However, to address the flight attendant union concern over safety and disruption of cabin crew duties (taking that at face value, rather than as a smokescreen for self-interested preservation of the seats for their own non-revving that the expense of other employees), Southwest will require employees to qualify themselves for cabin jump seats with a short annual computer-based training that will presumably cover procedures, restrictions, conduct, and emergency expectations for those occupying a jumpseat.

Meanwhile, Southwest shifted the cabin itself to assigned seating, and that’s also created more conflict over overhead bin space including where crew bags go. Southwest had reserved forward overhead bins for crew use, which created problems for passengers paying for extra legroom space at the front of the cabin who couldn’t store their bags near their more expensive seats, were moving those bags back in the cabin, creating a domino of issues including egress during boarding and deplaining.