'Space A' program makes room for eligible travelers

  • Published
  • By Luke Waack
  • JBER PAO
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  Many Department of Defense identification card holders are eligible for discount flights around the Pacific theater, and the world.

The 732nd Air Mobility Squad¬ron manages the Joint Base El¬mendorf-Richardson Passenger Terminal, and the unit wants the community to know what a big benefit they may be missing out on, officials said.

Hundreds of dollars can be saved by flying "Space A."

"Many folks, if they've never traveled space available, all they've heard are the horror stories," said Air Force Maj. Andrew Scott, 732nd AMS aerial port operations officer.
Many people are eligible to ride in space available on military aircraft and military contracted aircraft, so they should educate themselves and do it, said Senior Master Sgt. Rob Bolton, aerial port superintendent.

"All active-duty (troops) and family members, reservists who have the authority from their com-mander to use it, retirees and then unaccompanied dependents - com¬mand sponsored - overseas can use it, which would be the same here, the dependents of deployed (service members) can use it," Bolton said.

The most important thing space available travelers need to carry with them is a flexible attitude, Bolton said.

"Flexibility is the biggest thing. It's not like you're buying a ticket on Delta and you're showing up at the counter with a guaranteed seat on a plane. You have to take extra leave at the beginning and at the end. You got to be prepared that, 'hey we did have a flight going straight to Travis but now we don't, but we do have a flight going to McChord, so all right, that gets me closer to where I want to go, now I'm going to go to McChord. You have to be flexible, that is the key to space a travel. Don't try to go to a wedding in three days and try to fly Space A."

While flying space available isn't as worry free as buying a commercial airline ticket, but an educated Space A traveler can save money and have fun traveling to many places the military flies, Scott said.

And the DoD has places all over the place.

"The travel through the Pacific is pretty easy, to go from here to McChord and then it's a bus ride to Seattle where AMC has commer¬cial flights that go out of there to Japan, Korea, Guam - everywhere but Hickam, on a commercial air¬plane (space available)," Bolton said. "Those flights fly at the same time every week. Ridership on those has not been as high as they would like. We do fly all over; we were just in the terminal, there was a flight going to Utah. we fly to An¬drews Air Force Base, Dover Air Force Base), east coast type stuff."

While travelers may have to sometimes make creative connec¬tions to travel where they want to go, they should always expect top notch service, Scott said.

"Don't be flexible with what you expect from a passenger agent; absolute class A service, each time, every time. You can expect a better experience than you would get at an international airport in terms of customer service."

Passengers can fly in many different types of aircraft, but most commonly, space on military aircraft from JBER is available on C-5 and C-17 aircraft.

"Traditionally, it's going to be C-17s although we do have some C-5s that pass through here. KC-135s, KC-10s, even C-130s; those are some of the frames you could expect to see yourself on," Bolton said. Finding out when flights are available is as easy as calling or stopping by the terminal.

"There are security reasons that we are limited on the information we can release, so they have to stop by," Bolton said. "Usually, the best thing to do is to stop by the termi¬nal because the information you can get at the terminal is a lot less restricted than what we can put out for you there in public."

The best times to travel are non-summer months, and not at Christmas break.
While Space A travel can come at a much lower cost, it isn't free. Some terminals must collect a head tax or a federal inspection fee from passengers on commercial contract missions.

Travelers should always have the means to buy a commercial ticket, if necessary.
Visit www.amc.af.mil/questions for more information.