Originally Posted by
pinniped
I think there's a lot of paid J travel out there, and then some subset of those people use upgrade instruments to get to three-cabin F. There's perhaps *less* paid F travel, but if J is the moneymaker then the airline is still doing quite fine when people upgrade J->F.
one time as a non rev i flew on a intl long haul flight on other carrier that upgraded me to j cause the supervisor wanted my number, and not for apis reasons.
my seat mate and i talked for a large portion of the flight. she revealed that she was travelling to do qc on a piece of equipment they were manufacturing in some far distant country. her flight, booked that morning, cost her company $11,000usd. i said "woah". she said "meh, that piece of equipment is worth $8 million and it's to go on a larger piece of equipment that costs us $44 million. the production delays per day cost more than my flight". i then told her i was an employee travelling nonrev. she laughed and hi fived me. nice lady.
moral of the story: labor and travel expenses are virtually the last worry for capital intensive industries.
and yeah there are 5 percenters out there who will just pay (def not $11,000, more like $5-7k for a flight that sells in y for $1500) cause that amount is of no object to them. i had inlaws like that.