If you want to be picked up by a pilot, go to the airfield (after 20 points).

I'm beginning to see people start to complain about Lakota drivers "ignoring passengers" in leiu of running logi, so I wanted to throw this out there from the pilot's perspective:

In the initial spawn-wave, pilots will come rush over to the spawn-shop like seagulls attacking french fries and fight over every passenger. (And some are greedy to the point that they won't leave without a full bird even with 4 more birds waiting instead of taking the 8 people in their bird to the zone 2 minutes earlier, but I digress...)

But after 20 points, Lakota pilots probably are going to be mostly focused on transporting logi instead of passengers, unless there's a mass wave of passengers at base, because of the completely reasonable assumption that most folks are going to just want to spawn in on the APC we have in the zone at that point.

So if you want a pickup by a pilot to go somewhere besides the APC or you're on APC cooldown, please, go out to the field to meet us while we're doing logi runs. It tells us you are ready to be picked up and want to ride with us.

All too often I'll park at spawn because I see 5+ people there and assume they need a ride, only to realize most of them are afk or window shopping for 2+ minutes and maybe one person needs a ride. Or the one person that comes out the shop first just runs over to the APC anyway. So I quickly got into the habit of just doing my logi runs and assuming no one needs a ride unless they ask for it / show they need it.

I have no problem taking passengers, and I'm willing to bet most pilots would gladly take people too; Pallets are consistent income during "downtime", but I'll gladly put it on pause to fly even 1-3 people to wherever they want in the circle instead if they make it clear they need a ride.

So do me a favor: Come to the field if you're ready. Don't make me guess if you're afk or about to APC spawn.