Now that many majors are developing their “basic economy” fares to mirror our product (sans bags, seat assignments, added restrictions etc) that may be a product they would be willing to reciprocate in the future. To be honest the only people who have truly benefited from my benefits at any airline I have worked at over the years were my retired parents who were not constrained by time, and a full flight for them meant staying somewhere nice another day or two.

Some are adamant that cheap travel is somewhat of an intrinsic benefit that should come with working in this industry, and if it works for them I’m glad they enjoy it. For me, if I have already shelled out money for a hotel or vacation and I’m traveling with one or more people, the last thing I want to count on is getting to the airport and sit at a gate staring at 40 names ahead of me on a United standby screen. Full fare > unnecessary travel stress.

To each their own.

We had 200 hr FOs here before the ATP rule.

Stop drinking the KoolAid. Even if you have Fedex pay, nonrev benefits are still great to have and use. Obviously not during peak holiday times (though this past year on Thanksgiving Wednesday I got my wife and 2 kids out on non-rev). They are still great to use for when you can.

Last year January grandpa passed and I found out at 8pm. We were able to get on a 1020pm UA flight to go make it in time for the funeral the next day. Sure we could have bought those last minute ticks for about $500 each one way. But ZED was dirt cheap and totally worth it, I think it was about $40 per person. We also love to travel internationally and I would much rather take a foreign airline out of America than a US carrier. Far better service and friendliness. Took Austrian once on ZEDs and we were able to pick pur seats online the day before because the flight was open. $245 for all 3 of us to Europe. We have benies on all AA/UA/DL/SW, the LCCs, and the foreign airlines. It’s totally worth it.

IMO Spirit actually has decent nonrev value that we could and should use to bargain with the legacies for a reciprocal deal. Yeah we don't have a vast network yet (I'll concede on that), but you can actually get somewhere nonrevving on Spirit unlike the legacies where the standby list runs 50 deep and a flight with 39 open seats the night before is oversold by 12 at the airport early the next morning. That is far less likely to happen on Spirit. I've found nonrev travel to be fairly predictable and easier to actually utilize here than when I had UAL and AA benefits at the regionals. Even with my experience as a line pilot, it's pretty rare that we are completely slammed full. There is most usually always a few open seats at the door close, even after all of our nonrevs are on board.

^^^^ last two post spot on!

The one clearly doesn't work here as he said they nonreved on United...

What are you even talking about? Where did Halon indicate that either worked here?