Once again, flyastrojets saves the day with an overwhelming knowledge of facts and specifics.

The way you describe it, this program actually seems like a creative employee perk that doesn't cost the company anything close to $50 million per annum.

1) No paying pax appear to be displaced; and
2) The passes appear hard enough to use that they couldn't be a very practical alternative to paid travel, when you kind of need to know that you are really going to get from point A to point B in a reasonable timeframe.

Indeed, as I read the article more closely, I now understand that the sole source of the $50 million figure was the flight attendant, although the article's author seems to go out of her way to create the (false) impression that this is a credible number.

Indeed, a review of the only other supposed "fact" thrown out by Ms. Haddon reveals her to have less than a strong grasp of numbers:

One director received more than $61,000 under this perk. That would cover 145 round trips between New York and Tokyo... by Ms. Haddon's calcualtion.

That works out to $420 per round trip!!

A more realistic interpretation is that the $61,000 represents three long-haul F class roundtrips for the director and his wife. Judging by the number of int'l F class seats occupied by customers paying full freight, I suspect the true cost of this perk was a fraction of the reported amount.

Sigh, another example of sloppy/biased reporting. It's hard to believe that the article's author, Gretchen Morgenson, isn't more closely supervised.... particularly given the problems with facts the New York Times has suffered recently.