Are you using your employment with American Airlines to score tickets for an outside venture, and if so, has that been authorized by AA?
BINGO Mike! I've been wondering about that one since I first heard about it. I suspect that he is using "jump" seating to get his speakers to and from events. The most interesting piece of evidence about this is that Brazeal promised Dirk from FedCon Germany that he would fly him to the states first class and it ended up being economy. "Jump" seating is almost always economy.
To clarify, Jump seating are unsold seats on a flight that airline employees can use to go from site to site, for either very reduced rates or for free.
Way to go Tim!
Actually, this isn't quite right. Having lived with a certain flight attendant who shall remain nameless, I can tell you that jump seats are the seats that fold down that only flight attendants can sit in - the ones you see them in during takeoffs and landings. Flight attendants and pilots often use spare jump seats to commute to their base when they live in another city - if there are two flight attendants working a flight and four jump seats on the plane, then two flight attendants or pilots can get on that flight for their commute and sit in those two open fold-down jump seats.
But these are NOT economy seats that can be sold to customers. In fact, it is against FAA regulations for non-crew to sit in the jump seats.
Now, if the plane is not full, a commuting flight attendant or pilot can move to a vacant 'regular' seat from the jump seat. But revenue passengers obviously get first dibs on those. Further, it is often difficult for a commuting FA to even get a jump seat - sometimes they might have to commute to base a day early because all the jump seats on the day they start work are already full with other FAs or pilots who are also trying to commute to base.
I'm not saying Brazeal didn't use AA inappropriately. But I can tell you that he did NOT book a paying passenger into a jump seat. It's against FAA regs.
You might be talking about another whole issue - non-revenue flying. Under that program, airline employees can book flights for reduced rates. Generally, only they and their immediate families can do this - it is not open to friends, business associates, or whatever. If a FA wants to take a friend along, that is allowed IF THERE IS ROOM (after paying passengers, airline employees commuting to base, other airline employees, and immediate family of airline employees - there is a hierarchy that must be gone through before a 'friend' can get on a flight - it is NOT first-come, first serve by any means.), but the friend must fly WITH the airline employee. Friends cannot fly unattended - they must be WITH the airline employee.
So for Brazeal to fly a non-relative in from Germany, he'd have to go to Germany and accompany him back - on a flight where that whole hierarchy of people with higher priority had been accommodated first.
