Liberal Talk Radio

The one real perk that made its employees want to commute miles away to far-flung airports, breathe stale recirculated air and smile like idiots for customers who are never really happy about being there in the first place is suddenly harder to come by, which says something interesting about the state of the economy:

Through deep pay cuts, shrunken pensions and longer hours, airline employees who survived the endless rounds of layoffs knew they could still count on one thing: free flights. But that perk, a touch of jet-setting glamour in an increasingly dreary line of work, is now much harder to use because so many flights are full.

“This system is now just ripping at the seams,” said Patricia Haddon, an American Airlines flight attendant for 29 years who often enjoyed flying in first class. “We all came to work here because we value the benefit. We are middle-class people but this allows us to have upper-class experiences.”

Airline employees and many of their family members can fly standby, taking unsold seats. But after post-9/11 problems prompted airlines to reduce the size of their fleets, a strong economy has revived demand for business and leisure travel.

Planes now fly on average with only about 22 percent of seats unsold. While that still sounds like a lot, quite a few are on unpopular routes or at inconvenient times. Many popular routes in prime hours are packed.

Thus, nonrevenue flying, as the benefit is known, is increasingly competitive. “It’s really not quite the benefit it used to be,” Chris Bagley, a Web site developer for Delta Air Lines, said.

Adding a bit of insult to injury, airline employees more frequently end up in coach seats on domestic flights, a grim prospect for many of them. That is because first-class cabins are full of frequent fliers who have been upgraded from coach and business travelers actually paying recently reduced first-class fares.

So if you’re trying to buying airline stocks low, pay attention to how disgruntled flight attendents are. It could be the “housing starts” stat of the industry.

And if you’re wondering how flight attendants are handling it, know that they’re not happy:

As available seats have declined, workers have paid more attention to how the line forms to fill them. American and Southwest employees board on a first-come-first-served basis. Delta and United employees board by seniority. Each method produces resentment.

US Airways, seniority-based, merged last year with America West Airlines, which was first come first served. The combined company, known as US Airways, has gone through an internal debate on which approach to adopt. The e-mail address for workers’ comments suggests the scraps they are fighting over: row23middle@usairways.com.

Emotions are running high, with more than 7,500 e-mail messages so far. “Picture me at my age (old) with 32 years of dedicated service,” a seniority advocate wrote, “running down the concourse trying to beat that new hire with barely six months on the payroll. Well, I guess he won, beating me and my wife (who just had her left hip replaced).”

An advocate of the first-come-first-served approach responded: “Many times over the years I have been sitting in the boarding area 60-90 minutes before departure, only to be bumped by a ‘senior’ employee with his wife and four children, who showed up 15 minutes before departure.”

W. Douglas Parker, chief executive of US Airways, is in no hurry to make a decision. He is asking employees to board former US Airways flights by seniority and former America West flights first come first served — to experience the difference — and is hoping that everyone calms down by the end of the year.

“We’re taking it very seriously,” he said. Flight benefits “loom large in our ability to attract and retain employees.”

Title swiped from the Replacements.