Space-A Scout › Guides › How to sign up
More questions about Space-A start with sign-up than with anything else. In the Space-A groups we watch, sign-up is the single most-asked topic after routes, and the questions are always the same handful: where do I do it, how early, what about my family, does it carry over when I connect, and why does the official link not work. This is the whole answer, with the roll-call record where it helps.
A sign-up puts you on a terminal's list. That is all. It does not reserve a seat, it does not attach you to a flight, and it does not cost anything. When a flight has Space-A seats, the terminal runs a roll call and hands out those seats by category first, then by sign-up date and time within each category. Two retirees are both Category VI; the one who signed up in July beats the one who signed up yesterday. That is the entire reason to sign up early.
A sign-up is good for 60 days at AMC-operated terminals, or until your leave ends if you are active duty, whichever comes first. That 60-day rule covers the AMC-run terminals at Navy bases too: Sigonella, Rota, Naples, Souda Bay, Norfolk and Jacksonville. A few terminals the Navy and Marine Corps run themselves use 45 days, NAS North Island, NAS Fort Worth JRB and MCAS Kaneohe Bay among them. When a sign-up expires you sign up again, and your place in line starts over from the new date.
1. Email the terminal. This works at every terminal, including the ones that AMC does not run. Send one email per terminal with your full name, your status and category, the names of everyone traveling with you, up to five destinations (AMC's own form allows five, and you can list countries rather than specific bases), your leave dates if you are active duty, and a phone number. The reply is your dated proof of sign-up. Keep it on your phone. Every terminal page on this site has the address, and the traveler profile writes the email for you.
2. The AMC website. In March 2026, after a 60-day test at Ramstein, Air Mobility Command rolled out an online sign-up tool at gatesea.mtmc.gov/amctravel to every AMC passenger terminal at once. It needs a DS Logon account or a CAC to get in. That one detail explains most of the "the link is broken" posts: if you are a retiree without a CAC and you have never set up DS Logon, the page looks like a dead end. It is not, but you have to make the account first. AMC has acknowledged form-validation glitches and delayed confirmation receipts while the tool settles in. Until you have a confirmation in hand, do not assume the sign-up took.
3. In person. Walk up to the counter with an AMC Form 140 filled out, or fill one out there. Slowest, but it works, and it is the fallback when both of the others are giving you trouble.
The website covers AMC-operated terminals, which includes the AMC-run terminals on Navy bases such as Sigonella and Rota. Terminals run by their own service, MCAS Iwakuni and the smaller Navy fields among them, still work by email or form. When in doubt, email. It is never wrong.
The standard advice is 45 to 60 days out, and it is good advice. The earlier date wins inside your category, and 60 days is as early as the sign-up will still be valid on your travel day.
But the record says something the standard advice does not. Some terminals publish, with each roll call, the sign-up date of the last traveler who got a seat. On the 453 roll calls across 23 terminals where that was published in the year ending September 2026, the last name called had signed up a median of 1.6 days before the flight. On 45 percent of those flights the last traveler had signed up within a day. On 68 percent, within a week. Only 12 percent of flights reached back more than 30 days into the list.
Read that carefully. It does not mean early sign-ups were turned away; it means that most flights had room for everyone who showed up, so the list rarely got tested. What it does mean is that "I only signed up last week" is not a reason to stay home. Sign up now, then go. The exception is the Patriot Express out of Seattle, where the last traveler called had signed up a median of about nine days out, and the sign-up date earns its keep.
AMC's rule, in AMC's words: active duty members must be on leave or pass status at the time of registration and for the travel itself. So the earliest you can sign up is the first day of your leave, and your sign-up is good for 60 days or until the leave ends, whichever comes first. Family members traveling with an active duty sponsor are on the sponsor's sign-up, so the same timing applies to them. If you are trying to register your spouse before your leave starts, that is why it is not going through.
Retirees, Guard and Reserve members, and 100 percent disabled veterans have no leave constraint. Sign up whenever you like.
List every traveler on one sign-up under the sponsor. The sponsor is the eligible member; the family members are passengers on that sign-up, not sponsors of their own. This is the source of the "I could not add myself under my spouse" confusion on the new website: the sponsor creates the request, and the dependents are added to it, not the other way round. Everyone on the sign-up has to be present and travel-ready at roll call, and dependents travel with the sponsor except in the specific unaccompanied cases the regulations spell out, which mostly involve a deployed or overseas-stationed sponsor. If that is your situation, call the terminal before you plan around it.
When you fly a leg and land at an en-route terminal to continue, that terminal registers you for onward travel with your original sign-up date and time. You do not go to the back of the line because you moved. You do have to check in with the new terminal and get on its list, so walk to the counter when you land rather than assuming it happened.
What does not carry over is a terminal you have not been to yet. If your plan is Travis to Hickam to Yokota, sign up at Travis and at Hickam ahead of time by email, and your arrival at Hickam keeps your Travis date for the Yokota leg. Sign up at Yokota too, for the trip home.
Sign up for the trip home before you leave home. Email the return terminal 45 to 60 days before you expect to fly back, exactly as you did for the outbound leg. Remote and overseas terminals are the ones people forget, and they are the ones where the list matters most because the flights are fewer. Their addresses are on the base pages here, and a watch on your home destination will email you when a flight posts.
Email the terminal you want to fly from with your name, category, the names of everyone in your party, up to five destinations, your leave dates if active duty, and a phone number. At AMC-run terminals you can also use AMC's online tool at gatesea.mtmc.gov/amctravel, which needs a DS Logon account or CAC, or fill out an AMC Form 140 at the counter. Sign-up is free and does not commit you to anything.
Sign up 45 to 60 days before you want to travel; a sign-up is valid for 60 days at AMC terminals and your sign-up date is your place in line within your category. It is rarely too late: on 453 roll calls in the year ending September 2026 where terminals published the sign-up date of the last traveler selected, the median was 1.6 days before the flight.
No. AMC requires active duty members to be on leave or pass status at the time of registration and at the time of travel. The sign-up is valid for 60 days or until the leave ends, whichever comes first. Retirees, Guard and Reserve members and 100 percent disabled veterans have no leave constraint.
When you arrive at an en-route terminal to continue your trip, that terminal registers you for onward travel with your original sign-up date and time, so you keep your place in line. You still need to check in at the counter when you land. Terminals you have not reached yet are not covered, so sign up with each of them by email before you leave.
AMC's online sign-up tool, launched in March 2026, requires a DS Logon account or a CAC. Retirees and family members without a CAC need to create a DS Logon account first. AMC has also acknowledged form-validation glitches and delayed confirmation emails. Email sign-up with the terminal still works at every terminal and remains the reliable fallback.
How often each route flies, and who gets on · Every base, with its sign-up email · Space-A explained in five minutes
Space-A Scout collects 72-hour schedules, Patriot Express calendars and roll-call results from more than a hundred passenger terminals, refreshed every twenty minutes. It is free and no account is required. Built by Luke Connally, USMC, Retired, who flies Space-A himself. See every route we hold records for, every base, or start with the five-minute primer.