Staff travel is not subsidised by fare paying passengers. Staff travel is normally subject to load so the staff travel IF there is an empty seat. When staff travel on free tickets, possibly once a year, as a leave perk, they are usually 'firm' rather than sub-load but the priority is low and vulnerable to offloading. The amount paid by staff usually covers all the additional taxes and catering.


I am sick and tired of non aviation professionals who can't hide their jealousy of aviation staff but would guard the perks of their own profession with their life.

Agreed, and with the risk of injury, no captain is going to order an evacuation unless he considers it necessary. Thankfully, never had to order one myself.

I think the aviation industry, especially at that airport, needs to consider if their tugs are fit for purpose, and also why is the use of the evacuation slide just as life threatening as not using the slide (i.e. remaining in a hazardous cabin.)

I hope that the injured lady is able to make a full recovery.
.

I'm afraid the SLC won't believe you......

I'm sat maybe 200 feet back from the flight crew.

I don't know what they know, but they can't see what I can see.

In any serious ground incident, the advantage may be 80/20 to the flight crew, but it sure as heck isn't 100/0.

My patience for the command will be deep and extensive based on a presumption of their profoundly superior knowledge.

But I don't have checklists to perform or hundreds of strangers to worry about.

If I'm burning or breathing smoke, I'm looking out the door and if I decide to then I'm leaving.

Hope to see you in court later.

Then you will be a statistic, and just prove the preconceptions that the cattle are not to be trusted. Without me running checklists and doing some pilot stuff and then giving the evacuation command you may exit into a running engine.

And the cabin crew are trained to assess the suitability of each exit so you don’t exit your ignorant self into a fire or inop slide.

If staff paid for their flights, just like every other passenger, then airline revenues would increase and the cost of a commercial passenger ticket would be lower (Not a lot but these are facts)


So by giving away a ticket to staff for free the commercial passenger IS paying a higher cost.


This is simply proven by the fact that the company revenues are higher if they sold the ticket to the member of staff so the cost to a paying passenger is lower as the fixed costs get divided up by a larger number of passengers.


Two people on a two seater aircraft is a lower cost to the passenger if both pay. The same applies for larger aircraft as the price a passenger pays is related to the revenues the company makes and not just the numerical number of seats sold.

sptraveller - Following your own instinct may well end in court with you being charged with manslaughter, opening a door based on what you see may cause fire to enter the cabin and asphyxiate most of the pax. When the fire occurs at an airport the fire services are usually on site within minutes, as little as a minute and a half has been recorded. The captain will be in radio contact with the fire chief and the fire chief often has the best picture of all, certainly far better than you, the fire chief will advise the captain and that may well involve telling the captain not to order an evacuation as the fire can be stopped from outside. There was a case in Singapore last year when exactly that happened, all the pax disembarked down steps, uninjured, caused a riot of protest here on PPRuNe from a bunch of self interested Rambos who wanted to open the doors prematurely, fortunately none were on board the aircraft that was involved.

maybe...OTOH...

1. “Giving always” Don’t think I have ever been given a free ticket for non-duty travel.

2. The tickets I purchase are standby...Probably 25% of the time the flights I have paid for are so full I end having paid up on flight deck jumpseat ....bit a poor show IMHO to charge the public rate for a seat that is not available to the general public.....no doubt you think differently...

3. Believe it or not ( I guess you won’t) These days company standby /jumpseat tickets are often pretty much pound for pound the same as a commercial bought well ahead of the flight....so fear you not, a lot of staff where I work actually do buy commercial tickets to remove the uncertainty of standby.


At many airline Staff travel is perhaps not quite the freebie perk you think it is, and methinks it is possible you are overestimating the effect on your travel budget.

What is the source of your 'facts'?

We do pay for our flights.

We get FOC tkts ONLY when travelling on duty

sptraveller - You will definitely see me and my company in court. Rabble like you are not suitable for air transport. Walk, go by car. But don’t fly.

PM

With the current habit of everyone closing every blind in the cabin - nobody knows what the state is outside. The default behavior of 'window seat' pax on sitting in seat is to close the blind then go to sleep against it. I consider this a flight safety hazard if there is a ground or takeoff emergency, but it is never corrected by the crew who often demand all the blinds are closed on deplaning.

Graham O,

There seems to be a slight hint of green eyed monster in your post.

So to reassure you, and to set your mind at rest, short haul staff tickets are about the same price as advance booking full fare tickets when all the taxes etc are added on.

Your argument that if staff paid full fare prices would be cheaper does not hold water.
There can be a fair old saving on long haul but you are assuming that staff would travel anyway. If it is discretional travel most would not.

Also, even on long haul many staff would pay full fare to travel when they want to in order to book accommodation in advance, or to ensure a seat when they need it i.e. to weddings, funerals etc.

The main advantage of staff travel is the ability to buy tickets at the last minute or to cancel at the last minute without penalty.

Some interesting logic there. If we extrapolate that a bit, perhaps staff should pay the last second rate for the ticket. That would make your ticket price even lower. Or maybe we should pay the last second, business class rate for our ticket. Maybe you can suggest what rate we should pay for a ticket that doesn't actually come with a seat. Should the other passengers subsidize my hotel costs, when I can't get out of a city for 3 days.
About half of my travel is done on confirmed tickets now. Best case scenario, my staff travel works out to a really good seat sale with the advantage of last minute booking.
But how did we get here on a thread talking about evac?

It's not the so called 'free' travel that I find of concern, it's the arrogance of the flight crew towards their passengers, well demonstrated in this thread, that needs to be addressed.

I quite agree... It's absolutely disgusting that pilots on a profession pilots forum seem to think that they know better than a PPL holder not to mention the passengers down the back.

Sheeeeeze.... the arrogance of it :rolleyes:

funfly - By arrogance do you mean you don’t like the fact that others might know more than you? Or do you mean that we should respect the actions of people who decide to take a reckless course of action and possibly endanger others in the process? Or do you mean that no matter what we say, we are wrong and we should never expect passengers to do as they are told?

The truth, as painfull as it may be for you to accept, is that whenever you are on an aircraft and you are not the captain, someone else is in charge. You do as the person in charge says, it’s not up for dispute or debate. Our part is to do all we can to fly people as safely as we can from one place to another. When things go wrong we try an learn from our mistakes and those of others. And when sheer stupidity reads it’s ugly head, we call it out for what it is. We should not have to worry about offending some poor darlings feelings or upsetting snowflakes, especially on a website dedicated to professional pilots.

Finally, there’s at least two of us at the front of every flight. If you don’t like us please, please find another form of transport controlled by more sensitive, less arrogant people. Because we are not changing.

PM

By 'arrogance' I mean comments about your passengers such as:
If you are prepared to publicly refer to your passengers as above then this does you little credit. I am sure that some of the better pilots contributing to this thread will have felt uncomfortable hearing a colleague referring to passengers like this.
I have every respect for the qualifications of the crew up front and some of the difficulties that you encounter, of course your passengers should take notice of instructions you provide and those who act stupid are stupid, my point is that it is unprofessional to refer to your customers generically, whoever they are, in a derogatory fashion.

If the airline pays an employee a dollar, it costs the airline a dollar (actually more with employment taxes, etc.) If the airline gives the employee a dollar's worth of free travel (based on ordinary ticket prices), it costs the airline a lot less than a dollar. At some level, at least, the labor market is competitive, so an airline that gives staff free travel is likely to have lower ticket prices than one that doesn't. Within reason of course -- a job with no pay but unlimited travel privileges wouldn't be very attractive (though if your spouse had a good job . . .).