AIRLINE BRATS

Airline Brats are children of airline employees who have been accustomed to travel at an early age and usually end up seeking employment in the industry for that benefit. If you want affordable travel as a benefit this is the industry, if you want your benefit to be money get a job where " money" is the benefit. My own father was a jet engine mechanic for United Airlines who began his career out of the Marine Air Corps WWII for Republic Airlines who turned into Capital Airlines and who merged with United Airlines in 1960. My husband's father was a United employee who began his career in Cheyanne, Wy. when that was United's main overhaul base. He was a sheetmetal/airframe mechanic responsible for the "skin" of the airplane. San Francisco is United's Maintenance Operations Base and my father was transferred there in 1966. My husband followed two of his brothers and went to work for United out of high school. Rod had the fortune to be accepted into the apprenticeship program and United paid for his college. Rod was a machinist and a landing gear inspector and at the end of his career was a lead in the tool crib responsible for thousands and thousands of tools and related stock that are required for airplane maintenance. I'm a retiree myself, I made domestic and internatonal travel reservations plus assisted travel agents. Airline brats are children who have become accustomed to flying anywhere the airline goes and in our family's case would be the Brittish Isles, Europe, Japan, China, Central and South America, Egypt and Australia. If United had gone to Antarctica that would be on the list also. It was nothing for Rod's daughter to fly out to Honolulu on a morning flight, spend the day at the beach, and fly home on a redeye (overnight flight) the same day as a teenager with a friend who's father was UAL also. My own daughter was used to flying back and forth from San Francisco to Virginia as a little girl on her grandfather's passes and knew exactly what to do and how to behave and it was usually in First Class in those days before frequent flyer programs. If you see a child or person way overdressed they're probably airline employees as we can't sit in First Class in jeans. Now when we go to the gate and there's 40 people waitlisted for upgrade and only 12-30 First Class seats total, economy plus seating or even two seats together is what we hope for because we travel "standby". Rod and I met in San Francisco as young single parents and dated off and on and always stayed friends and he would come to visit me in Virginia when I moved back in 1978. I came to United at forty years old because Rod and I had rekindled our romance and we dated cross country for four years before becoming engaged and marrying in 1995. I could never complain about salary because I was doing at least two roundtrips a month for four years on the company. The first person you meet when you start dating again isn't supposed to be the person you spend the rest of your life with-- it took us a while to find out that wasn't true. Rod's been all over the world and me not so many places but I travel between California and Virginia like it was going across the street. (Originally posted on FB July 22, 2011
EPILOG: United Airlines bought Continental Airlines this year. Because Continental had relaxed rules as to what you could wear in First Class United has now adopted their standard. We can now wear jeans in First Class if we should actually be assigned a First Class seat. United has purchased Continental and Continental has taken over United...not just dress rules but other things, too. We retirees are on the choping block as they may take our seniority away. We'll see.


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