Free air ticket for family members of airline workers??

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pablo p

that's bullshit, i have to pay anywhere from $100 to travel in the US and up to 600 to fly international. an they only give you 3 roundtrip tickets a year. all that is on standby. and remember the average airline worker makes less than 40k a year and that's with over 10 years with the company

Jennifer O

As an employee now with the airlines it is almost better to buy a confirmed ticket so you can get the miles. If you do get reduced rate travel it is usually based on the miles and almost always just as expensive as the lowest nonrefundable ticket. AND it is standby which can be grueling. It used to be 10 dollars for coach 20 dollars for first class....No more!!
The only advantage we airline employees have is kindof an in..we can tell by pattern which flights oversell regularly and if we book just like everyone else and are flexible we can take :"The Bump" for compensation.
But those days of discounts and being confirmed are LONG over my friend..

studatwgms

with most airline they are in agreement with other airlines to have workers to just pay the tax to fly on their airline. If you fly with the company you work for then they give on average 14 family and friend passes and all free flying for you.

whereistiger

Staff travel is THE main benefit of working in the aviation industry. I know I wouldn't do it unless I had staff travel - there'd be no point! It's a fairly thankless job where the pay is lousy, you get abused by disgruntled passengers constantly, work long hours on your feet, shift work (sometime having to be at the airport at 3.45am, sometimes you don't finish until past midnight), push wheelchairs up steep aerobridges, lift luggage, run up and down the terminals and stand outside in the rain on the tarmac and all the while trying to get flights out on time with the least disruption to passengers. Despite being a customer service job it comes with a huge amount of responsibility - one stupid mistake on your behalf at check-in or the gate can cost thousands of dollars and cause hundreds of people to be delayed - on top of which you have to have extensive knowledge of fares, excess baggage, dangerous goods, safety, aircraft, routes, arrival and departure times and airline policy and protocol (which can change daily) and the airport. Passengers expect you to know absolutely everything all the time about every aspect of aviation. I even get asked questions if I pop into the shop in my uniform quickly on my way home.

My suggestion is that next time you book a ticket you get a receipt which gives you a complete breakdown of the price of your tickets, including fuel charges, airport charges, taxes etc. But let me go ahead and explain something about staff travel so that you don't think that you are working to cover the cost of my tickets as a regular confirmed passenger:

In Australia (and our model is based on other western countries), most airline employees and their families/friends can book 'standby' domestic fares, which means that they only pay for the taxes (fuel and airport). It's more or less 50% of the full fare. Standby passengers can get bumped for a paying passenger which frequently happens, although they can move onto the next service free of charge. On popular routes this means they can be 'bumped' several times in one day! If it turns out they can't fly at all then the money goes into a credit shell - no refund. The airline I work for gives its employees a certain amount of free travel each year, but it's not a great amount - about AUD$500. Employees, family and friends can fly domestic standby as often as they like as long as they pay the standby 'non-confirmed' fare.

All airlines have several affiliates (called 'codeshare' or 'interline' within the industry) who offer other affiliate employees cheap international deals - again standby. For example a ticket from Brisbane to London would normally cost me about AUD$2500-$3500 return to buy through a normal travel agent (depending on the time of year and airline). It costs around $800 return going standby with either Emirates or Virgin Atlantic. It can include several stopovers, which are also standby, so there is a chance of getting stuck somewhere! This offer is open to employees and their spouses and children as long as the spouse/kids are travelling with the employee. It is not open to friends or employees children over the age of 21.

All airline employees in Australia, and related industries such as freight, can apply to world interline which is an online travel agency offering discount fares - anything from 40% - 90% of full fares for confirmed seats - and you have to have worked in your particular industry for 6 months with an employer's letter to prove it. Because these are confirmed seats there is no chance of being bumped! A lot of airline employees will book standby going out and world interline coming back.

Many airlines now employ contractors, who do not enjoy the benefits of staff travel and are often paid less for doing the same job, and new workplace agreements coming in for airline staff means that even cabin crew, which was once a lucrative job, are suffering huge pay cuts and loss of benefits. With fuel prices rising airline staff might bear the brunt even further so that fare prices can remain stable for a while longer. So the next time you are in the airport eyeing up airline staff and gritting your teeth that you are 'paying' for their fares - remember what we go through to get you on board your flight and thank god YOU don't do it for a living. Maybe that $1500 doesn't seem so bad now, eh?

raghav r

it depends on the airlines that u are travelling...

famliy tickets given would be like once in an year...

wkharris2001

no, you're not paying for our airfare. we as employees get free airfare because we work for the airlines, it's one of the perks of the job. the plane is going to leave with us on it or without us on it. so why not let us on if there is an extra seat available? as far as the buddy passes every airline is different some pay a small fare, some pay a flat rate, and some pay nothing at all. but the buddy passes are limited, working at Delta I only get 8 each year. my parents and I fly for free and my spouse flys for free also.

iceman

The airlines have really cracked down on giving free tickets to employees.

But employee discounts are nothing new. In any business employees ussualy get a much better deal then the customers.

Aubrey A

I have a family member who works for southwest. He is only allowed to get free airline tickets for him and his wife, and only if the flight is not full. His kids and any other family can get stand-by passes, but a lot of flights are overbooked anyway, so you have to wait until you find a flight that isn't full. Most of the time they end up purchasing tickets for everyone anyway in order to have a guarantee of the time they will get where they are going.

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