Them Flight Bennies

One of the best things about being a flight attendant is being able to fly for free on my days off! It’s super cool!

I finished training at the beginning of May, and so far, we’ve taken so many free flights that I quite honestly can’t count them. We’ve flown somewhere for fun at least 1x/month. We took a vacation to Cabo San Lucas Mexico. We took a vacation around Alaska. We’ve flown L to her aunt’s house in Oregon and back, and we’ve flown L to her grandparent’s house in Minnesota and back.

So how does it work?

Basically as soon as you start working for an airline in the US, your family (yourself, your spouse, your kids, and your parents) all get “non-rev” benefits on your airline. “Non-rev” means non-revenue; in other words, the airline makes no money from you flying. Having non-rev benefits means that we get to fly for free! It’s the greatest perk of working for an airline!

If we fly internationally, we do have to pay the taxes and fees incurred for the flight, so international flying is not completely free.

The problem with non-revving is that it’s standby travel. We show up at the gate and get open seats on the airplane. The only problem? Sometimes there are no open seats for us!

The key to non-revving successfully is being flexible and willing to modify plans as needed. When our family went to Mexico, we were initially planning to go to Hawaii, but the flights to Hawaii were so full that I was afraid I might not make it back in time for work, so…we went to Mexico instead!

Our Alaska trip was the most stressful trip in terms of non-revving. Particularly, when going to Katmai, we risked losing the money I had paid for our seaplane, as well as completely losing the opportunity to go to Katmai at all (since I only had camping reservations for one night) if anything went wrong with us getting on our flight into King Salmon, Alaska. (Thankfully, that portion of the trip went swimmingly). We did have a bit of a difficulty at the beginning of the trip: Our plan was to fly into Gustavus, AK on the first day of the trip. This meant we had to fly into Juneau first. The flight to Gustavus from Juneau was wide open, but getting to Juneau from Seattle looked a little more sketchy; there were just a few seats open. Then suddenly, on the day of the trip, the flights into Juneau from Seattle started to look more and more full. We showed up at the airport in time to get on the first flight of the day – which was fully booked. I wasn’t too worried, as people miss flights all the time! But, then the flight closed without any non-revs getting onboard – AND there were several (I think around 7) non-revs listed ahead of us! (That means that the others had priority over us because they had been working with the company longer). The next flight to Juneau was an hour-or-two later, but that flight was also full. I knew that all the other non-revvers who had tried to get on the first flight would likely try to get on that flight too, and we’d get nowhere! Luckily, I had noticed that there was a multi-leg flight that was leaving soon that would eventually end up in Juneau on that same day. We ran to that gate and the agent worked to get us on the flight. The agent had a hard time issuing us tickets and ended up having to manually do several things to get the tickets issued AND had to call a supervisor to get us on. This took so long that they had to delay closing the boarding door for us. The captain ended up coming out to see what the delay was in closing the boarding door, but he agreed that getting us on should be a priority. And they got us on! We had to land in several cities and switch seats in several cities, but we did eventually get to Juneau on the day we needed, and all for free!

Another interesting aspect of having flight benefits has been factoring in gas prices. My sister lives ~5 hour drive from us. Flying to her takes about 4 hours between the drive to the airport, going through security, waiting, and then flying. But if I drive to her I have to pay for gas, and if we fly, we get to her for free (well, actually for the price of transportation to Seatac from our house).

Right now, non-revving is pretty simple because I only have flight benefits on my airline, and I can see flight loads (e.g. see how many empty seats there are) through my company’s website/app.

In a few months (after 6 months of employment), flight benefits will open up on other airlines. That is when things will get more complicated. On the major US airlines, I will be able to fly domestically for free, though I will have to pay taxes and fees when flying internationally just as I currently do with my own airline. However, Saign and L will NOT be able to fly for free on other airlines. They’ll have to pay a fee (often around $100-200) to the airline in order to fly with them. This is where things get interesting: Saign and I have always chosen our vacation destinations based on where we can get cheap tickets. It seems that between the taxes and fees + the fact that the fees we will have to pay are only one-way, we are not convinced that we’ll save much money (if any) on flying internationally, unless we go to destinations that we’ve typically avoided because the airfare is so high. (We’ve never been to South America or Japan because I’ve never seen a particularly affordable deal on airfare to these destinations). Now, some airlines will upgrade their non-revs to first class or business class, meaning that for around the price of a coach ticket non-revs get to fly much more comfortably. The only problem with this? None of these airlines will let non-rev kids L’s age fly in these cabins. Until L is a little bit older, we’ll be stuck in coach!

The other thing that’s complicated about non-revving on other airlines is that I can’t see the flight loads. There are apps in which airline employees can share flight loads with one other, and that helps, but it’s not as easy as just checking for myself on my company’s website AND one of the three major airlines in the US prohibits their employees from sharing flight loads, so it’s not possible to learn flight loads for them.

Thus far, having flight benefits has been super cool, amazing, and worth the minor hassle. When we start trying to fly with other airlines, things will get much more complicated! I’ll keep you updated!