Space-A Scout › Guides › Categories and eligibility
Every Space-A seat is handed out in the same order: by category first, then by sign-up date inside the category. So the first thing to know is which category you are, and the second is what that actually costs you. The first part is fixed by regulation. The second part is where the folklore lives, and it is where the roll-call record has something to say.
These are AMC's definitions, lightly shortened.
| Category | Who |
|---|---|
| I | Emergency leave, unfunded. Immediate family emergencies only, by the most direct routing. |
| II | Sponsors on Environmental and Morale Leave (EML) with their dependents traveling with them, also on EML. |
| III | Ordinary leave, house-hunting permissive TDY, Medal of Honor recipients, foreign military. Dependents of members deployed more than 365 days sit at the bottom of this category. |
| IV | Unaccompanied dependents, 18 or older, of members deployed more than 30 consecutive days, traveling under EML. Under-18 family members must be with an adult family member. |
| V | Permissive TDY that is not house hunting, students, dependents in specific unaccompanied situations, post-deployment respite, and others. |
| VI | Retired members, National Guard and Reserve, ROTC, and the dependents traveling with them. This is where 100 percent disabled veterans sit as well. |
Two things people get wrong. First, the categories are not a ranking of how much the military values you; they are a ranking of how urgent the travel is. Second, within a category nothing but the sign-up date matters. A retired general and a retired lance corporal are both Category VI, and the one who signed up first goes first.
Active duty on leave or pass, Category III for ordinary leave. Must be on leave at sign-up and at travel.
Retirees with a retired ID card, Category VI, worldwide. This is the largest group flying Space-A and the group this site was built for.
Dependents of retirees, Category VI, when traveling with the retiree. AMC's wording is that family members of retirees are eligible when accompanied by a sponsor. Unaccompanied travel by a retiree's spouse is not authorized, and this is the single most common eligibility question in the groups.
National Guard and Reserve members, Category VI, with their Reserve ID and a signed DD Form 1853 from the unit. Without the 1853 you will be turned away. Travel is within the United States and directly between the United States and Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa.
Gray-area retirees, Reserve members with a 20-year letter who have not yet reached retired pay, Category VI, on the same geographic terms as Guard and Reserve. The member has to be on the flight; gray-area family without the sponsor is not authorized.
Veterans with a permanent service-connected disability rated as total, Category VI, within the United States and directly to and from the same territories as Guard and Reserve, not to foreign countries. Accompanying dependents may travel with the veteran. Bring the ID card the VA and DoD issue for this, not a VA letter.
Children travel as dependents with a valid ID card for anyone old enough to have one, and infants need an ID or the sponsor's proof of dependency. There is no minimum age in the regulation, and terminals will tell you the practical minimum is whatever the aircraft and the flight length make sensible. A friend, a fiance, a caregiver who is not a dependent cannot come. Only the people listed in the regulation may fly, full stop.
Here is the part that only a record can answer. Being called last matters exactly as much as the flights are full, and most of them are not.
In the year ending September 2026, terminals reported the lowest category that made the cut on 6,415 roll calls. Category VI got on 5,391 of them, 84 percent. The rest broke down as Category III on 469 flights, V on 233, IV on 200, II on 94, and I on 28.
Some of those Category III cutoffs were flights that filled. Many were not. On the 679 roll calls where terminals also reported how many Space-A travelers were competing, the median was three, against an average of 32 seats released. Only 7 percent of those flights had more people competing than seats. When the roll call stopped at Category III on a flight with 30 empty seats, it stopped because nobody in IV, V or VI was standing there.
So the honest reading is this: Category VI is a real disadvantage on the routes and dates where flights fill, and nearly no disadvantage on the rest. The route pages show which is which, one pair at a time, with the seat numbers next to the category rate so you can tell a full flight from an empty roll call.
The record shows three places where being last really does hurt.
August. Category VI made the cut on 68 percent of reported flights in August, the worst month of the year by a wide margin, because permanent-change-of-station season puts families on ordinary leave in front of you. October was the best at 97 percent.
The Christmas window. From 18 December to 4 January the Category VI rate fell to 73 percent against an 84 percent baseline, and the average number of seats used nearly doubled. Everyone wants to go home at once.
Specific tight routes. Iwakuni to Kadena ran 96 times last year and Category VI got on 23 percent of the reported flights, with an average of 15 seats released and 4 taken. That is a small aircraft on a short hop with duty passengers ahead of you, and no sign-up date fixes it. Compare Souda Bay to Sigonella at 98 percent. Same category, different route, different answer.
Pick the route before you pick the date. A retiree who chooses a gateway with 30 empty seats a flight has better odds than an active duty member on a route that fills, category or no category. Then sign up early, because inside Category VI the date is the only thing you control. Then show up marked present, because the last thing the record shows is that plenty of Category VI travelers on the list never made it to roll call at all.
Category I is emergency leave; II is sponsors on Environmental and Morale Leave with their dependents; III is ordinary leave, house-hunting TDY, Medal of Honor recipients and foreign military; IV is unaccompanied dependents of members deployed more than 30 days on EML; V is other permissive TDY, students and certain unaccompanied dependents; VI is retirees, National Guard and Reserve, ROTC, 100 percent disabled veterans, and the dependents traveling with them. Seats are assigned by category, then by sign-up date within the category.
In the year ending September 2026, Category VI made the cut on 84 percent of the 6,415 roll calls where terminals reported the lowest category selected. On the 679 roll calls that also reported how many travelers competed, the median was three against an average of 32 seats released, and only 7 percent of those flights had more travelers than seats.
No. AMC's rule is that family members of retirees are eligible for Space-A travel when accompanied by the sponsor. Unaccompanied travel by a retiree's dependents is not authorized.
Veterans with a permanent service-connected disability rated as total are eligible as Category VI within the United States and directly between the United States and Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa, not to foreign countries. Accompanying dependents may travel with the veteran.
August. In the year ending September 2026, Category VI made the cut on 68 percent of reported August flights, the lowest of any month, because PCS season puts families on ordinary leave ahead of retirees. October was the best month at 97 percent.
How to sign up · Category VI odds, route by route · Two-tap eligibility check in the app
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.