“Two Pilots Are Deadheading” — Why Alaska Bumped Paid First Class Customer to Coach on 8-Hour Flight


There’s a lot of frustration among frequent flyers when they’re first on the upgrade list but they get skipped over to seat an employee up front. And it starts vigorous debates. It’s now standard for pilots traveling to another city to work a flight to get first class before customers.

However, we don’t usually see pilots bumping paying first class passengers down to coach so that they can sit up front. But that’s what happened to one Alaska Airlines customer flying from Liberia, Costa Rica to Seattle.

I bought a class C first class return ticket from LIB Costa Rica to SEA Seattle. This is an 8-hour international flight. Was really excited to treat myself after not traveling for years due to an accident.

Checked in the evening before no problem. Arrived at airport and checked my bag no problem. Flight starts boarding and I hear my name being called. Go to gate agent and am told that 2 pilots are dead heading and I’m being pushed to regular economy on a completely full flight.

I was told my status was low and that’s why I was moved. On the flight I asked if my selected breakfast was still available as I hadn’t eaten and they said no. I asked if I could buy a Mediterranean snack pack and they said I didn’t preorder and there were none. They had a ham box but I’m vegetarian and couldn’t eat it.

I’m stuck on an 8-hour flight starving and haven’t been offered any food besides 1 biscoff cookie or ham and wasn’t offered any special drink or snack. I’d planned to be sitting in first enjoying a shakshouka and a nice mimosa and instead I’m starving and feeling like I wasn’t worthy of the seat I paid for after working two jobs and saving up for a big trip to celebrate my medical recovery.

And, in fact, this is how things work at Alaska Airlines! According to their pilot deal,

  • First Class is mandatory if any single deadhead segment is scheduled to exceed 5 hours and this one is 8 hours.
  • First Class is mandatory for all segments when consecutive deadhead segments are scheduled to exce.ed 5 hours total and the pilot is flying a segment immediately in the same duty period.

At under 5 hours first class is offered when available, but they don’t actually bump revenue passengers to provide it. In recent years, with a pilot shortage, rising pilot wages, and a strong bargaining position first class deadheading has become standard although the Alaska language that forces bumping paid first class passengers to coach to make room is unusual.

United gave their pilots first class deadheading during the pandemic, to get the union to agree to allow them to keep all pilots current and flying and not have to issue pilot furloughs. Then the 2023 collective bargainin agreement locked this in.

  • First class at booking. If First isn’t available, then the pilot is set to auto-upgrade ahead of all upgrading passengers if First later opens up, unless the deadhead booking is made within 3 hours of departure (then it follows the normal upgrade process).
  • For long haul flights, revenue passenger downgrades can happen. United can overbook the premium cabin to accommodate a pilot in some cases, and when overbooked the pilot must be boarded in the premium cabin and may not be downgraded to economy.
  • Pilots are ahead of complimentary upgrade passengers for downgrades to coach. If first class is oversold, or a plane is swapped to one with a smaller first class cabin, complimentary upgrade passengers have to be downgraded before pilots.
  • Customers rarely see this play out. Because pilots riding up front gets driven by booking logic and auto-processing, elites experience it as “upgrades were never available” rather than “a pilot jumped ahead of me and took my upgrade.”

Delta also gives priority to deadheading pilots, offering business class (or first if no business cabin) on international and transoceanic flights. Domestically, they get “Comfort Plus if available at time of booking” and first “for 3-hour or greater flight segment preceding a working flight segment or a redeye.”

If the required seat class isn’t available when the deadhead is created, a pilot is automatically upgraded before any passenger if higher class becomes available.

Interestingly, most of the attention has gone to pilots upgrading to first class on American Airlines, and that’s probably because of the visible way they do it.

  • American Airlines deadheading pilots get business class for transoceanic and coach for domestic.
  • At the gate, though, deadheading pilots are placed at the top of the upgrade queue. They clear ahead of elites for upgrades.
  • Given the timing, and where customers see available seats and where they are on the list, it’s obvious that a pilot is taking the seat they expected to receive. Passengers literally watch the pilot upgrade happen.

Here’s the American Airlines policy which implements its 2023 contract:

Ironically, the least pilot-friendly on paper policy for ‘pilots trump passengers in first class’ is American’s because the default is coach travel on domestic flights, with premium cabin access comin out of what’s left of available seats at the airport. But because the process is visible to customers, American gets more heat for this than others.

Readers are often sympathetic to pilots traveling up front because they ‘want well-rested pilots’ but I would point out that is what FAA rest rules are for, and time spent deadheading counts as duty time. It’s time they could otherwise be flying a plane in the cockpit.

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“Two Pilots Are Deadheading” — Why Alaska Bumped Paid First Class Customer to Coach on 8-Hour Flight
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Igor Jeuhan