Family Benefits

Can someone explain the typical benefits extended to the family of a pilot; ie free tickets and such. Does that only extend to immediate family or to say grandparents as well? Have many of the perks gone with the fall of the industry?

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Can someone explain the typical benefits extended to the family of a pilot; ie free tickets and such. Does that only extend to immediate family or to say grandparents as well? Have many of the perks gone with the fall of the industry?

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Most airlines have a program you can buy in to that gives you "free standby" or "non-rev" travel. I always wondered how they got "free" or "non-rev" out of something you pay for, although the cost is pretty low....

...which is not surprising since you can only use seats that would otherwise be empty! It doesn't cost them a thing to let you fly standby, so this is yet another "profit center."

USAirways made us pay once a year (about $250 to include my family and parents, although parents had to pay a "discount rate" for standby tickets. AMR was "pay by the flight" with the famous D-2 card.)

As far as actual tickets there were no deals. You could buy ID20s, which were 20% off of max price. You could usually beat this by 50% by walking up to the counter and getting an agent to sell you a supersaver.

Travel benefits is a whole business in itself. Standby travel sucks. As long as you live somewhere no one wants to live and only travel to somewhere no one wants to go, standby travel is acceptable. Forget about Florida. You'll be bumped and bumped and bumped. Fridays and Sundays? Just stay home or buy a ticket. Gosh even people with tickets get bumped!

TANSTAAFL (or a free ticket!)

The benefits are going to be different depending on which airline you are working for. I worked for a regional airline in customer service and we got free passes with them and also free tickets on United including first class domestic and business class international (stand-by). We also got benefits with other airlines that usually costed around $50 round-trip (stand-by).

The passes were good for immediate family (spouse, children) and also parents. Along with all of this they gave out so many "buddy" passes a year that could be given to anybody which costed around $50 round-trip (stand-by) on the regional carrier.

As an airline pilot you can jumpseat on almost any airline for free.

I loved the flight benefits and I definetly used them for my benefit and flew all over the U.S., Canada, Japan, England, Scotland all for FREE!

I have had travel benefits via a family member for my entire life and it has been AWESOME.

A large part of stand-by, or non-rev travel is what priority you are; S1, S2, S3... with sub categories of each. A person using an S1 pass would get on before an S2, 3, etc. If two people are using the same type of pass then boarding priority falls onto your seniority ranking based upon your date of employment.

With Delta's travel benefits immediate family members (spouse, children) get unlimited free domestic travel on an S3 priority. The parents of the employee get a limited # of passes as well, but on a lower priority.

As far as international travel goes, each family member gets 18 travel days free, but you do have to pay taxes/fees on international flights. These costs may vary greatly. To give you a rough idea on how much you may spend I went round trip ATL-LGW (Atlanta - Gatwick) for just about $100. Not too shabby considering it was Business Class both ways (Delta doesn't have 1st class on international).

Employees are given 8 buddy passes a year to do with as they please. These passes allow the bearer to fly at a reduced rate and are the lowest priority of pass. Again, these prices vary and are dependant upon distance. Salt Lake City to New York was around $150 round trip last time I checked.

Children lose their privileges once they turn 23 if they are attending college. I believe you lose them at 19 or so if you're not going to school. Once you're over the age limit you still get passes but it's a different priority.

I have been taking advantage or my benefits for a long time and I really don’t have any horror stories, or bad feelings to tell you about. As long as you check the flights for open seats and are flexible on when you travel it usually works out in the end.

Long post, I know, and there's even more to it! I lose my privileges in about 5 months (turning 23) and I'm still learning new stuff about it!

Ha!

Here in india... Pilots actually walked out because the flight was overbooked and there was no place for their family. 3 hours later a few pax were assigned to another flight and the family were accomodated.This is for FREE!

Nice ...isnt it?


My 150th post

At Delta once you are over 23 you go to what is called an S3B priority. Only thing lower is a buddy pass. But the cost is like 10% is think. When I got hired they were calling the free flights a benefit now its called a privilege. I guess that is the legal dept hard at work. Here in ATL non reving is hard year round. The old saying is if you want to go to heaven on Delta you go through ATL, now its even more true

There have been some folks at Delta who were terminated because they sold their buddy passes. I recently heard that last year Delta made over $1.5 million off buddy passes. Not sure how close the number is but we see alot of bags indentifying them. I told a few friends I gave my passes to that if they acted stupid and I got in trouble or fired that they had to support my family and pay my bills. So far no troubles.

I've heard that SWA gives their employees unlimited space, meaning you do not fly stand-by or nonrev. I've also been told that this is extended to their parents as well. Can anyone verify that?

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According to SWA's website, employees and their families recieve unlimited space-available travel on Southwest Airlines. This means as a SWA employee you receive an unlimited number of space-available passes. You can travel on SWA as many times as you want, however the travel is space-available. That means standby. Sorry

[/ QUOTE ]No, that means you'll never freaking fly, I've never flown with them when they've had extra seats.

At my husband's company myself and our kids fly for free on his airline. We get discounts on other airlines as well. This is of course standby. Then his parents fly for free. He also gets what are called flexipasses each quarter to give to friends and other family that they can fly standby at a discount.

Now how about Fed Ex and UPS, how exactly does that work with the whole family flying?

Do they even offer anything at all?

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Here in india... Pilots actually walked out because the flight was overbooked and there was no place for their family. 3 hours later a few pax were assigned to another flight and the family were accomodated.This is for FREE!


[/ QUOTE ] Some Indian co-workers told me stories about growing up in India. They described bus rides with chickens in the isles, and about 100 people in a bus that holds forty. In fact, one of the guys told me he started college a year late because he fell out of the bus when it hit a bump.
Guess things have change in India in the past 20 years.