I don't know if this has ever happened on other airlines, but I know that Air France has been known to fly an EMPTY B-747 from Paris to Fort-de-France or Pointe-à-Pitre just to pick up hundreds of standbys who have been stranded more than a week. I suppose that in the end it costs them less to do that than do redo all sorts of work schedules for missing employees.

In the US, missing employee=lost job.

Hi
We're non revs also and had been to Istanbul about 3 yrs. ago. Coming back to the US was the worst part. Flights were overbooked and some people were stranded for a couple of days. We bought discount tickets to Paris and stayed overnight at the airport. We talked to people who had been there for several days. Paris airport has gotten better for non revs, I understand but it was a real cattleyard and the french arrogence didn't help. We buy discount tickets to other airlines and if we don't use them we turn them in for refunds. Non rev travel can be tough but it has opened the world.

This thread reminds me of the one year I did marketing for an airline. I had nonrev tickets for us to go to FL. That worked out just great. And until I read this thread I had forgotten that yes there were written instruction regarding how one dressed and conducted themselves. That was not a problem for us.

The problem was getting home which we had to do, due to a real estate problem. Absolutely had to get home, sigh! But could not get out of FL. So I walked over to another airline counter and bought 2 last minute tickets to get us home. One of the most expensive "free" flights I ever had.