Space A Travel

  Space A or space available traveling is a fantastic perk of being in the military. There are tons of people who use it every day to fly all over the world. My husband and I just traveled space A for the first time to and from and States.  Luckily for us, we managed to not run into any major problems.  We flew from Ramstein to BWI and our return flight was from BWI to Ramstein. Space A traveling is selected by category and date and time of sign up. There are different rules for different categories. We traveled as CAT III because my husband is Active Duty and is on leave.

     Taken directly from the AMC (Air Mobility Command) website. Please read and make sure you understand what category you are in! 

Category I:
- Emergency travel in connection with serious illness, death, or impending death of a member of the immediate family of the following:
- United States citizen civilian employees of the DoD stationed overseas.
- Full-time, paid personnel of the American Red Cross serving with United States military services overseas.
- Uniformed service family members whose sponsors are stationed within the Continental United States (CONUS) and the emergency exists overseas.
- Family members of United States citizen civilian employees of the DoD when both sponsor and dependents are stationed overseas at the same location.
Category II:
- Sponsors on environmental and morale leave (EML) and accompanied family members.
- DoD Dependent School (DoDDS) teachers and their accompanied family members in EML status during school year holiday or vacation periods.
Category III:
- Members of the uniformed services in an ordinary or re-enlistment leave status and uniformed services patients on convalescent leave. Members on convalescent leave may not travel overseas unless their leave form is so annotated.
- Military personnel traveling on permissive temporary duty (TDY) orders for house hunting.
- If the permissive TDY is for the purpose of permanent change of station house hunting, the member travels in Category III and can be accompanied by one family member.
- Dependents of military members deployed for more than 365 consecutive days.
- Bona fide family members (up to age 23 with a valid identification card) of a service member of the uniformed services when accompanied by their sponsor who is in an ordinary leave status within overseas areas between overseas stations and air terminals in the CONUS.
- This privilege does not apply to travel of dependents to or from a sponsor's restricted or unaccompanied tour location or to travel in a leave status to or from TDY locations. It applies only to round-trip travel to an overseas area or the CONUS with the sponsor. DoD 4515.13-R restricts use of these privileges to establish a home for family members in an overseas area or the CONUS.
- Foreign exchange service members on permanent duty with the DoD, when in a leave status.
Category IV:
- Dependents of military members deployed for more than 120 consecutive days.
- Unaccompanied family members (18 years or older) traveling on EML orders. Family members under 18 must be accompanied by an adult family member who is traveling EML.
- DoDDS teachers or family members (accompanied or unaccompanied) in an EML status during summer break.
Category V:
- Unaccompanied Command-sponsored dependents.
- Students whose sponsor is stationed in Alaska or Hawaii.
- Students enrolled in a trade school in the CONUS when the sponsor is stationed overseas.
- Military personnel traveling on permissive TDY orders for other than house hunting.
Category VI:
- National Guard/Reserve components/members of the Ready Reserve and members of the Standby Reserve who are on the Active Status List.
- Retired military members who are issued DD Form 2 and eligible to receive retired or retainer pay.
- Family members (with a valid identification card) of retired members when accompanied by a sponsor. 

    Within each category there are different rules about signing up. You need to sign up at each location you might be flying out of. For us, Ramstein was our only option to fly to the states but when flying home we had multiple locations along the east coast, so we signed up with 5 different passenger terminals. You will email each location this information: 

- Leave Form and/or dependent command sponsorship as applicable - not required for e-mail sign-up (optional)

- Names of travelers (Last, First, and Middle Initial)

- If active duty - Leave start and End Dates

- SSN for active duty and Passport numbers for dependents

- Branch of service of the sponsor

- Rank of sponsor

- Rank of dependents (END = enlisted dependent / OFD = officer dependent)

- Emergency Point of Contact info (Name, address, and telephone #) address=number, street name, city, state

- Date of birth for all travelers (DD/MMM/YYYY)  (i.e. 25 DEC 1987)

- Country of Residence

- Nationality

- Passport country of issue and expiration date (DD/MMM/YYYY)  (i.e. USA / 14 JAN 2014)

- Ultimate destination (address, city, state, zip code) If traveling to Charleston, but you are headed to Oklahoma, the destination should reflect and Oklahoma address.

- and country of choice for travel (example: USA)

           

     If you send all of this info ahead of time, when you get marked "present" your time will be expedited.  If you don't send all of this info, we are required to input this info upon the first time you present yourself for travel. (Taken from the Ramstein Passenger Terminal Facebook Page)

 When you email this information in you will not get a response. They have way too many emails coming in to respond to them. To make sure your information made it and your date and time of sign up are correct be sure to print out your email with the date and time. If something happened when sending in your email or it got over looked, they will honor the date and time of sign up from your printed email. You may be wondering where the date and time of sign up comes to play. Yes, there are categories but within each category people are put in order according to their time of sign up. If you are a CAT III (active duty on leave) you can NOT sign up before your leave starts. So my husband’s leave started 17 May, so we were eligible to sign up at 12:01am 17 May. If you are a CAT IV-VI you can sign up 60 days in advance but it’s only good for 60 days. If you sign up exactly 60 days from when you want a flight and then don’t get on that flight, your sign up is no longer good on day 61. So give yourself a few days of adjustment if you don’t get on a flight.

Within CAT III we signed up on 17 May at 12:01am. Someone else in CAT III may have signed up 17 May at 6:00am; therefore we are listed before them because our sign up time was earlier. Each category is listed this way.

The locations that have space available flights list their flights 72 hours in advance (search for their Facebook page for updates). They list the destination, tentative seat numbers and the roll call time. You must mark yourself present before roll call time or your name will not be selected for a flight. To mark yourself present you must check in at the terminal with the proper documentation (ID cards, passports, leave form or command sponsor letter) and be travel ready, meaning you and your luggage are ready to board a flight. Around 20 minutes before call time of a flight they will post all passengers that have checked in on a scrolling list. It will be in order of category and date and time of sign up. It will also list the number of seats requested by each person. The list will look like this:

1.

2.

3.

4. King, C        CAT III    seats 2

5. Smith, T      CAT III    seats 4

6. Johnson, S   CAT III    seats 1

And the list will continue through CAT IV, V and VI. At this time you’ll be able to get a better idea of your chance of getting on the flight. They will start at the top of the list and call each person. If that person accepts the flight the seat numbers will begin to drop. If your name is called and you are not there you are removed from the list and put at the very bottom! If you are chosen for a flight then you’ll immediately check your baggage and go through security to prepare boarding for the flight. If you are flying out of Ramstein to BWI or visa versa you will be on the patriot express which is a commercial flight. You will have to pay a head tax per person of $29.10 and will be served a meal. If you are flying on a military aircraft make sure you are wearing closed toed shoes! You can also buy a meal for $4.60.

Ramstein Passenger Terminal

All of this information is very easy, you just have to make sure you follow and understand all the steps. The part that gets frustrating is not getting a flight. When my husband and I were trying to fly out of Ramstein we kept looking at flights we wanted. We were hoping for a flight on Saturday the 25^th, there was one listed but it was then moved to Sunday. We drove to Ramstein Saturday knowing there was a flight early Sunday morning to Birmingham with 20 seats. When we arrived to check in at the terminal the seats had already been dropped down to 9. We of course did not get on this flight so our next option was a flight to BWI on Monday. We stayed another night at Ramstein and hoped for the best on Monday. The flight to BWI had 153 seats so our chances were much higher! We were selected for this flight at made it to BWI. My in-laws reserved us a rental car so we could drive to NC. Coming home was a little more stressful. We knew there was a flight from BWI to Ramstein Tuesday the 28^th with 52 seats. We were not real confident we’d get on this flight and weren’t sure we wanted to risk driving 6 hours to BWI for only 50 seats. There was also a flight from Norfolk to Ramstein but we called to ask about seat numbers and they were not sure if they were even accepting space A travelers. They were unsure if the military personnel on the plane would be carrying weapons or not and if they were we would not be allowed. We took our chances and drove to BWI. We got very lucky and got seats on this flight, there were only 4 seats left after our name was called.

Flying space A may be stressful at times but getting a free flight across the Atlantic is definitely worth it!! Please remember space A flights can change at any time! Flight times, destinations and seat numbers can change even minutes before a flight. Also know that actual flight times and order of destinations (if multiple stops on one flight) are not listed online due to OPSEC rules. If you have specific questions about flights call the terminal to get more detailed information. Just remember to be very flexible and prepared for anything!

Don't expect anything fancy or comfortable!

Filing Moving Claims Part II

     My last post about filing claims talked about the process up until submitting the final claim. Here is what needs to happen next! Once that final red “submit claim” button is pushed you will receive an email stating that the moving company has received it, this may take a few days. If you have not received a response about your submitted claim call your moving company to confirm whether or not they received it. The moving company will then make an appointment with you to send someone out to look at and take pictures of all the damaged items. For some reason they need their own photos even after you spent all that time submitting them yourself

     For our claims process, after the guy came to look at our items I believe it took about 2 weeks to receive notice that the moving company had given us an offer on our items. The offer can be seen on the DPS website where you submitted the claim. On each item it will show how much you asked for it and how much the moving company is willing to offer. Now it’s up to you to decide if you think you got what you wanted. The next step is VERY important! You have to accept EACH offer individually. So if you have 15 items you have to click on all 15 items one at a time and click “accept offer.” If you don’t accept the offer on one item you will not get the money for it. Lucky for us the money we were offered was reasonable so I did not have to counter offer anything so I don’t have much information on that. I do know that if you do counter offer an item you’ll need to provide well written explanation as to why you should get more money for that particular item.

     The items that can be repaired will have an offer of a repair price. This is their estimate on how much it would cost to fix/repair your item. If you accept the offer it does not mean you have to repair it. We had 2 chips in our living room TV stand but you can’t see it unless I point it out. The TV stand was 100 dollars. They offered us 75 dollars to have it repaired. It was not worth the haste of finding a repair person. So we accepted the offer and ended up pocketing 75% of the original value. Now is the right thing to do? Some would say no and that that money if given to you for a repair. But honestly, that TV stand is going to go through another overseas move and could get damaged again. So when looking at the amount you are offered take into consideration how much you paid for it and what percentage they’re actually offering you.

     Now once you’ve accepted the offer on EACH ITEM you will again get another response from the moving company. We got an email around 5 days after accepting our offer asking for our address. About 2 weeks later we received a check in the mail. Our claims process if finally 100% over and I can finally throw out our old broken couch that is hogging up the garage space! 

Here is a small recap of the process. 

This is actually taken directly from the claims page! 

1)      You should notify the Transportation Service Provider (TSP) [the Moving Company] of any loss or damage to your personal property within 75 days of the delivery of your shipment. 

2)      There are two ways to notify the Moving Company of any loss or damage to your personal property, but only one way to file your claim. 

               A.  Loss and Damage Report. Using forms provided by the Moving Company, you can notify them of your loss or damage at the time of delivery and/or after the delivery. You can also file a loss/damage report in the DPS claims module. NOTE: You do not have to file a loss/damage report as long as you file your claim within 75 days of the delivery of your shipment. Submitting a loss/damage report does not constitute filing a claim. 

              B.  Filing your claim. You must file your claim in the DPS claims module. TO prepare to file your claim, you will need to know what items were lost or damaged to include the inventory number, year of purchase and purchase cost. Pictures of damaged items can be uploaded into the DPS claims module. Once your claim has been submitted, your Moving Company will contact you with an email within 30 days to complete the claims process. 

3)       Step by Step instructions for both loss/damage report notification and how to file your claim are located at www.move.mil

Traveling with Kids

     I recently had a fellow Army wife send me a message stating that it's much easier and less expensive for my husband and I to travel here in Europe because we don't have children. That is very true! I don't know what it's like and it doesn't usually cross my mind. I don't think about paying for each child, or where a good restaurant is that will have kid friendly food. I don't think about the extra bags and luggage needed or needing to find a restroom to change diapers. So although I don't have any personal experience traveling with children I did find some great websites with some "traveling with kids" tips. 

Exploring Bavaria, Germany

Traveling to Europe 

Traveling with Kids: Facing my fears in Europe

Europe with Kids: The Ultimate Guide 

Europe with Kids

Filing Moving Claims Process

       If you received anything that was broken, damaged or lost through the moving process you can claim those items to either have them repaired or replaced. This process can take a while so once your HHG are delivered unpack everything as soon as you can. You have 70 days from day of delivery to start the initial claims process. Make a list of all items that are broken, damaged or lost. Write a small description about what happened to it. For example, if your kitchen table in scratched you would write "kitchen table scratched on tabletop, left end of the table." While you are going through each item be sure to take pictures of the damage and write down the inventory number. You know, those annoying little stickers on every piece of furniture that you find years after your move... You will later use these when finishing the claim. 
       Call the claims office, usually where JAG is located (legal office), to see if you need an appointment. The first time you go in be sure you have ALL paperwork from the move. Inventory of all items, POA's, orders and the paper you signed from the movers on the day of delivery. Now the next step may vary depending on where you are located. Some places will help you get started so you understand how the website for filing claims works. Other locations may not help at all or they may do every step for you. 
        Here at Vilseck, the claims office showed me how to work the website so I could then finish the claim on my own. The DPS website can be a little frustrating so be sure you ask questions to make sure you understand the process. I have heard the DPS website will not work on a Mac but I do know someone who had theirs work. Also, on a PC you will need to open everything in Internet Explorer, it will not work in Firefox or Chrome. 
       Now the first step is going to be adding all the items that were broken, damaged or lost. At this time you'll only be filling out the item name, description of what happened and the inventory number. The claims office at Vilseck does all of this with you. Once all items are entered then you have finally started the claims process. Remember to get this done within 70 days of delivery!

          After that list is turned in you have 9 months to complete the claims process. All of this has to be completed through the DPS website. A spouse can file the claim but the claims people will not contact the spouse/dependent because the move was done under the sponsor’s name. So all emails regarding the claim will be sent to the sponsor. In this next part of the claim you will be adding detail to each item such as serial numbers, pictures, and copies of receipts. You will also add in the year the item was purchased and what amount you are claiming. For example, we had a desk broken into pieces. I looked up the desk online and found the exact same one. I claimed the exact amount of what the desk was being sold for. If you are unsure of how much an item is research it to find the value of what it’s worth. If you don’t tell them what the item was worth or what it looked like they will research the cheapest one and pay you for that. I had hand painted wine glasses broken. They were a gift so I don't know how much they were. I went onto Etsy and found some that were similar and claimed a price that they were being sold for. 

         You will fill all of this info out for each item (don't forget to attach those pictures). Once every item has been completed you will submit the final claim. DO NOT click the red "submit claim" button until you are 100% sure everything is done. You can not go back to fix it. Once you have submitted the final claim you should get an email stating that the moving company has received it (it may take a few days). They will then send someone to your house to look at all your items. They will be looking to see if the item can be repaired. Depending on what happened to the item you will either get a replacement amount or a small amount to get it repaired.
       Once the claims person takes a look at all the items they will send you an offer of how much you should get back to either replace or repair your items. You CAN counter offer this! If you don’t agree with the amount, argue it!

Reminder: Do not throw away any items until the claims process is complete. All items will need to be looked at before sending an offer.

And this is where the claims process has stopped for me. We are currently waiting on an offer!