Don’t Fly Cross-Country on Standby Tickets With Kids During the Summer When You’re Broke

NYC Aviation ^ | August 22, 2012 | Matt Molnar

[Gamecock]

The Saxton family was stranded at Salt Lake City International Airport for six days.

According to the local ABC affiliate, the Saxtons got there last Wednesday night and didn’t leave until Tuesday.

Weather was great. Flights were going in and out on schedule.

But the Saxtons — Curtis the dad, Nicole the mom with Dominic and Sadee, their 4- and 13-year-old kids — were flying back to Virginia on JetBlue buddy passes. Buddy passes are vouchers that airline employees can share with family and friends, allowing them to fly for next to nothing.

Flying for almost free comes at the cost of convenience. Buddy pass users are not just flying standby, but they’re at the very bottom of the standby list. After all the regular passengers board, and then all the higher-priority standby passengers board, if there any seats left, only then are buddy pass passengers allowed onto the plane.

And because it’s August, when everyone is traveling to or from vacation, there haven’t been any seats, nevermind four, so the Saxtons remained at the bottom of the list.

Unable to afford purchased seats, a hotel or even enough food, the Saxtons slept on airport benches without showering while eating only one meal a day. Dominic, the 4-year-old, had to be checked out by paramedics at one point.

JetBlue did nothing wrong. The rules are the rules.

And speaking of rules, it’s possible the employee who gave the Saxtons their buddy passes will land in hot water over this. There are fairly strict rules about the people who use buddy passes being well behaved. If “crying to the media and making the company look heartless when it did nothing wrong” was not in the rulebook before, it probably will be after this.

United Airlines, which has been battling its own customer service demons as of late, perhaps in hope of generating some positive buzz, stepped in as the savior and hooked up the Saxtons a free flight home on Tuesday. Kudos to them for helping out, but had the Saxtons been flying on United buddy passes, we all know they’d have maintained the same position as JetBlue.

Correction: United Airlines provided a hotel room, and a generous individual donor bought the Saxton’s a flight home.

I do feel for the Saxtons. I’m not sure if they knew what they were getting into, if whoever gave them the buddy passes explained fully how it worked, or if they simply thought that luck would be on their side. Although tempted, I won’t blast them or their parenting skills.

But hopefully this will serve as a lesson to airline employees to be sure to be very clear with their friends lest they end up in a similar predicament

[HamiltonJay]

I did the buddy pass thing 1 time on delta, my layover wasn’t this extreme but the price of the tickets was hardly next to nothing.. in fact it was barely cheaper than what I could have gotten bonafide fairs on JetBlue or Southwest for. After that 1 experience I opted against Buddy Passes from that point on.

[I still care]

LOL. We went to Disney with no money (we had a family pass, gifted to us) and then found we couldn’t get in the gate, because we didn’t have money for the parking!

We thought the gate was $7 but they had raised it to $10. They kept saying, “You came to Disney with NO money?” After a search through the car cushions, they had pity and let us in. We had a pretty good time.

Sometimes, when you have no cash, you just let the adventure happen.

[UCANSEE2]

What I want to know is did they have pass through a TSA inspection each time they tried to get on a plane ?

[ponygirl]

The thing most non-industry buddy-pass flyers don't understand is that the non-rev system is tiered with some airlines. So just because they've been stuck there for 6 days does not mean they will ever get any closer to the top of the list. At the airline I used to work for, it was NR-5, NR-6, NR-7 and NR-8. Within each category, the traveler is selected by the company seniority. NR-5 were traveling on company business. NR-6 were the retirees (this has since changed). NR-7 were active employees. NR-8 were buddy passes. So if you are an NR-8 and your friend's seniority number is August 2011, you are pretty much at the bottom of the NR-8 list. And even if you've been there waiting for a flight every day for a month, anybody who is a NR-7 and shows up is always going to be ahead of you.

And Salt Lake is horrible to pass ride out of... so many employee commuters live there and everyone has a huge family with 6 children.

[ponygirl]

And one other thing I didn’t mention... if they knew how to work the system, they would have tried to get to a different airport, like to the West Coast or Denver or somewhere that they had more options. I once had to fly to Brussels to get to London before I could get to Berlin because the DC to London flight was cancelled. You have to be creative.

[allmendream]

And the morons were waiting for four seats? One parent and one child could have flown out. Poor AND stupid.

[ridesthemiles]

IF you are that POOR, you should NOT be flying anywhere at all.

Senseless gamble. Busy season.

Airlines do not owe them a thing!!!

[I still care]

Getting in a plane and going far away from home with no money in your pocket and a bunch of kids is reckless.

[nascarnation]

IF you are that POOR, you should NOT be flying anywhere at all.

A recent local tv analysis of Indiana EBT/TANF card swipes shows a surprising number in Vegas, Disney (Fl and Ca), Puerto Rico, and even Hawaii.

[ContraryMary]

What moron flies standby with kids?! Expecially a 4-year-old!

I remember we were in Montana one year many years ago visiting my in-laws when Northwest went on strike. We had to take whatever the other airlines had available. We split up -- I took our daughter and hubby took our four-year-old son -- so that we could get home in time for our daughter to start school.