Pilots Now Take First Class Upgrades Over Paying Passengers: Inside The Contract That’s Enraging Elite Flyers – View from the Wing

A frustrated American Airlines elite flyer is complaining that he can’t get upgraded, while pilots fly first class. And his conclusion is that he should switch to Delta – where unbeknownst to him, only 13% of first class seats go to upgrades.

Platnuim pro on @AmericanAir but still cant get upgraded to first because 2 pilot’s are sitting in 2 of the first class seats. bout to eye up delta real soon. pic.twitter.com/Knbvpvu5jF

— JOHNNY “DELUXE” TOWN (@4EverEboy) December 31, 2024

Upgrades have gotten nearly impossible on most airlines, but a massive increase in premium seats that airlines will be offering could shift that dynamic.

One small element that’s crowding out elite upgrades is that pilots now sometimes take priority over passengers. While United prompted this by adding this for pilots in 2020, American Airlines changed its policy with their 2023 pilot contract. For the first time, their deadheading pilots receive upgrades ahead of customers to available first class seats at the gate.

Officially, in American Airlines computer systems, these pilots are coded with a higher priority even than top status Executive Platinum and even ConciergeKey members. Here’s the full detail, from an internal memo, on how pilot priority for first class upgrades works now at American Airlines.

Unsold first class seats now go to employees who are not piloting an aircraft between segments on a trip they’re working. That’s different than commuting to and from their base if they live in a different city than where they’re assigned to start and end their trips.

This is broadly similar to a benefit that United pilots won four years ago.

In fall 2020, after the first round of taxpayer subsidies to airlines ran out, Delta and Southwest didn’t furlough anyone. American and United did. But United didn’t want to furlough pilots. They need to keep flying in order to stay current and it’s costly and time-consuming to run pilots through simulators and get them takeoffs and landings.

United wanted to spread out the limited amount of flying they were doing across their pilots. To get the union to agree to this (yes, it’s an odd world where the company has to give something to the union to avoid furloughs), one of the concessions was that United pilots would have top upgrade priority for available first class seats at the gate.

Some readers said ‘this is business travel’ so pilots deserve it, but most companies don’t pay for first class on domestic travel, and certainly not companies like American Airlines that lose money in what should be their best quarter (their third quarter loss was due to cash payments… to pilots).

I do think it’s a bad look when customers never see an upgrade, but they see pilots clearing ahead of them. I don’t blame the pilots at all. They’d rather have first class than coach, and they negotiated it as part of their contract. The problem lies with management, whose priorities I see as off, and who have failed to keep up with demand for premium products so upgrades have become exceedingly rare – even as they promote those upgrades as a benefit of regularly buying tickets with the airline and spending on their co-brand credit cards.