Starting your work day at 3am might not seem like a ton of fun, but for Robert “Bingo” Bingochea, a Denver based flight attendant for United, it’s part of the “always exciting” routine that he loves. In fact, he was up an hour earlier having coffee and checking the news, prior to meeting up with Rachel Gillett from The Business Insider who had the adventure of following him around for the day.
63-year-old Bingochea is based in Denver, but lives in Phoenix, so he’s a “commuter”, required to standby for flights from his hometown to his base prior to his assigned schedule. Rachel shadows him on his Denver-Houston-Denver flights for the day from arriving at the airport to boarding a commuter flight back home. The piece even gives you a look inside one of United’s airport operations station, via a swipe of Robert’s United ID.
Check out pictures and a full-write up of her day shadowing Robert here. Thanks to Ken L from BI for sharing with our readers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danaxsBQ_aw
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
1 comment
If he flies standby, how does it work if the flight is full when he’s supposed to be somewhere at a certain time? If he is scheduled to fly out of Denver to somewhere on the morning of December 26 (which is notorious for full flights) and the PHX-DEN flight has no seats available to get him there to work, what does he do? Is this another Dr. Dao situation? Does United just bump paying passengers for crew that are not on the clock? Surely there must be some protocol here and I’m intensely curious.Thanks for any insight.