If you stay at enough hotels – especially ones that are near (or even relatively near) an airport, this may be a familiar scene. Or maybe it’s even happened to you.
You’re in line to check in, and suddenly, a vanload of flight attendants enters the lobby from outside. Instead of going to the back of the queue like everyone else typically would, they go right to the desk, typically to one side or the other of the queue of people waiting to check in, and it usually feels like someone almost immediately checks them in. Meanwhile, you, who got there way ahead of them, are still waiting.
What’s up with that?
Welp, that’s apparently what recently happened to one Eric Sean Clay.
It appears Clay was at a Sheraton hotel a while back and was perturbed that a bunch of flight staff seemingly cut him in line.
Just when my opinion of @AmericanAir, the airline I have used for years, couldn’t be any lower, now their flight attendants and pilots are walking to the front of the line at the Sheraton and demanding to be checked in before those of us that have been waiting for a long while @united @Delta
Now, it appears that Eric Sean Clay is no ordinary man. He has lots of letters after his name, to show what a high level professional he is. MBA, MSc, CHPA, CPP, PSP and PCI. His LinkedIn describes him as a Transformational Security Executive, Culture Creator, IAHSS Past President, an IFSEC Global Influencer, 2024 SJA Influencer list, Adjunct Professor, Expert Witness, Board Member, Brand Ambassador, and Keynote Speaker.
Very fancy shmancy.
So, although I could be wrong, I suspect, based on that one TwitterX comment, that Mr. Clay may think very highly of himself, and how DARE that flight staff cut in front of him, even though he had been waiting for a “long while.” I mean, don’t they know who he is? (Full disclosure: “Don’t you know who I am?” is probably one of THE BEST ways to get under my skin. Because whether I know you or not, frankly, I don’t give a crap who you are. Your poop smells the same as mine, so get off your high horse; I’m not impressed.)
But why DO flight crew get to go ahead?
All kidding aside, there’s an actual reason why flight crew get to check in as soon as they arrive at a hotel, despite people waiting in line for “a long while.”
You probably know that the FAA has strict regulations on how long pilots and flight attendants are allowed to work, and then how much rest they’re required to get before going in the air again. That’s why, if a flight is significantly delayed, flight crew sometimes “time out” and aren’t allowed to fly anymore.
Anyway, these hotels where flight crew stay have agreements with the airline(s) in question. Additionally, the vast majority of paperwork is most often done ahead of time. So it’s not really them “checking in,” like Clay erroneously thought, but just marking their name on a pre-made list to let the hotel know they’re there, and getting their room key. That’s it. Quick, easy, and painless.
And sometimes, especially when it’s a lot of flight crew members scheduled to arrive at the same time, the hotel may even have a dedicated person at the check-in desk to get them squared away as quickly as possible, without affecting the “regular people” queue at all. That way the flight crew can get to their rooms and go to sleep so they’ll be well-rested for their next flight (which may be only 10 hours in the future).
Why it’s important
If you think about it, depending on the flight, pilots, flight attendants, etc. may have 13+ hour duty days across different time zones. Depending on the circumstances, those scheduled layovers may be the bare minimum legally allowed and still provide only minimal rest.
And frankly, the last thing anyone wants is for a crew to have less rest than the FAA requires. I mean, would you want the pilot of the 767 you’re flying on to be fatigued while you’re 35,000 feet in the air? So yeah…besides that obvious potential issue, just as a crew can “time out” because of a delayed flight, if they don’t have as much rest time as they’re legally obligated to get, a flight can also be cancelled (or significantly delayed while the airline scrounges up a crew who has had enough rest).
The bottom line is if the flight crew had to stand in the queue to check in, especially if the timing of their rest time is cut to as short as it can be (after all, time is money, right?), and the queue is particularly long (or there’s a problem with check in because “these things happen”), the crew might “time out” of their rest time and have to do a fatigue call. And then the airline has to find a whole new crew…which, coincidentally, may or may not have happened to Mr. Clay:
…past the departure time, while you locate a crew for a flight. The last time you stated you were working diligently to make sure this didn’t happen again. Yet here we are again, 3-hours past…
He sounds like a real gem, doesn’t he?
Anyway, you can’t read the multiple, MULTIPLE replies that flight attendants offered Mr. Clay on his TwitterX account, because, lo and behold, he made his Tweets private after the deluge of responses started. Could it possibly be because people who think very highly of themselves don’t like to be told when they’re wrong.
I suspect Mr. Clay, much like this woman, learned to give flight attendants the respect they deserve.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
