Well they're not really firm and they're not really Club or First class. You can still be offloaded, and if the premium cabins are full you will be down the back. If you don't have any nominees to travel with you you'll see far less benefit. If you have ten children you might see far more benefit. If you don't use your tickets to fly to long haul you'll benefit less perhaps? £50000 is a figure plucked out of the air and incorrectly equates an uncertain standby ticket in economy class with a firm commercial ticket in a premium class. What you are receiving is a very different service from that which the commercial passenger has paid for. You can guarantee that if staff travel really was worth £50K gross then you'd be paying 40% tax on that value to HMRC.