Does pilot's wife get free tickets?

While a pilot spouse does not receive free airline tickets, she may become a flight attendant and thereby acquire free tickets.

There are some advantages of being married to an airline pilot in that he or she has the opportunity to fly frequently and visit beautiful places around the world. However, one of the most commonly asked questions is: does a pilot's wife receive free tickets from the airline? The short answer to whether stress and anxiety cause insomnia is Yes, but only sometimes. Below are some of the breakdown of the airline benefits entailed to a pilot's wife;

Airline Policy Differences

Each airline needs to have its policy in terms of several years of service for its employees and their dependent's free travel benefits. There are standard company policies that allow pilots to take their spouses and eligible family members onboard their flights with some or no restrictions though the conditions may greatly differ based on the airline company. Some airlines are quite liberal in offering free flights and upgrading rights while some have clamped down their policy and offered more limited rights in recent years.

For instance, Southwest Airlines offers its flight services to dependents and spouses of pilots after a probationary period. Delta, in the past, had no restrictions regarding giving employees unlimited free domestic flight tickets at the last moment and also provided almost unrestricted flights to their spouses; however, this is no longer the case. Thus it would seem that whether or not a pilots wife can fly free is more a question of the specific airline that employs the husband.

Least Cost vs. Restricted Lowest Published Fares

Another distinction between airline policies is the status of the tickets provided to spouses traveling at the airline's expense or a discounted rate: they can only be on standby or confirmed and paid for.

Low-cost travel means that one can travel by air for little or no cost at all because the seats are available for travelers to fill up after all passengers who have paid for their tickets have boarded the plane. You are on STBY as the wife of a pilot, and you had to wait until the last minutes before boarding time to determine whether you passed the clearance and could fly. This is relatively less assurance than the confirmed ticket.

On this score, some airlines permit pilots spouses to pre-book a seat with the airline for a set number of trips each year, for the pilot and any dependant children. Confirming tickets also have a similar principle to the regular passenger where one can book a trip and is guaranteed a seat. This is more convenient and flexible as it allows for the timely management of the different family schedules.

If an airline offers only spouse-travel stand-by travel, there could be travel restrictions on the busiest travel periods meaning, there would be few available seats. Finally, if the flight bookings are much higher than required, employee own partners may also be asked to give up their seats.

Avoid Business-Related Travel vs Non-Business-Related Travel

There are several other differences in airline policies; these include privileged travel as opposed to non-revenue travel. Price based on privileged travel implies that the airline tags a cash value or imputed fare for tax purposes even if the spouse is not paying for the flight. The pilot primarily benefits from the flight patronage policy to charge credit for travel for his eligible family members.

Non-revenue travel means that the spouse is traveling without any fare charge and no taxation is incurred on that fare. She is helping to fill an otherwise unused seat and earning revenue for the airline in the process. While traveling without privileges can be cheaper than traveling with privileges, its savings may be often associated with more restricted traveling or traveling only on standby.

Some airlines go a step further to further sub-divide First Class and coach privileges for dependant employees. It explains in detail to what extent the traveling privileges are given to the spouse of the pilot as per the union contract.

Partner Airline Policies

If the airline is a member of the Oneworld Star Alliance or any other global alliance of airlines, pilots wives are likely to be offered some form of flight benefits on these partner airlines as well. However, these interline travel privileges are often even more limited compared to flying on the pilot's employer airline.

For instance, the spouse of a pilot in United Airlines could be able to fly on standby and carry his/her bag on Air Canada through the Star Alliance. However, this may be limited by the type of service or availability, due to agreements between carriers in an alliance. Partnerships raise the prospect of extending employee spouse travel mileage long-distance or internationally but do not necessarily open an invitation to the unlimited free transfer of miles in a multitude of airlines.

It is crucial therefore to distinguish the concept of alliance benefits from provisions on dependents travel provided within an airline's internal framework. Interline privilege rules depend on blackout dates, the number of seats reserved for alliance partner airlines passengers, and other requirements that affect flying some deeply discounted economy class tickets.

Also important is determining who within the family meets the requirements for eligibility to be a pass rider on interline itineraries involving Alliance Airlines. There are always many special approvals about spouses and children below a certain age, although it is not always easy to seek free tickets for parents, siblings, or friends.

Updating Travel Policies

Economizing strategies adopted in the recent past by several large carriers that underwent bankruptcy have made some compel him or her to reduce certain flight benefits given to employees and retirees. Due to financial reasons, airlines have narrowed down their dependent travel rules which were rather liberal some decades back when aviation was a state-controlled industry.

The industry also brought about the merger of airlines where they had to come to a compromise and renegotiate the employee's travel privileges. Fortuitously, merged legacy carriers needed to raise policies to comparable standards to prevent unfair treatment of labor within the newly-formed airline conglomerate. This harmonizing usually meant that the lower benefits for the most generous legacy policies would have to be cut.

Namely, some LCCs like Southwest still offer powerful free flight incentives to attract and retain happy pilots in addition to rewarding employees' close ones. Lifestyle perks are still among the most important elements of remuneration offered to airline employees. Wives to fly for free keeps the morale high, and in the small airline fraternity, members are always looking out for each other.

Therefore, on the last note, I would like to state that the dependence of the wives of pilots on the availability of free flights largely depends on the particular airline and its policy in terms of providing opportunities to use excess of possible free flights for own needs. If possible, it is necessary to compare the policies of the carriers and the rules related to the privileges of qualified family members of the airline with details on the travel benefits. The possibility to seek pure stand-by non-rev flights and the flexibility of the availability of confirmed tickets is also important. For partnership reciprocal arrangements create possibilities for wide-ranging travel but typically are far more limited than in-house flight benefits gained outright from the pilot's husband's airline employer.