Well, in the course of travel we meet PLENTY of airline employees, but of course they are acting in their roles as, er, airline employees.

My brother works for an airline. Unfortunately, it's an airline that has little useful service where I live. His "buddy pass" tickets aren't even very useful.

My experience is that very FEW of the airline empoyees I might meet either in the course of flying or chatting up on a trip or visiting on a family vacation can actually influence the management morons who make our travel so idiotically miserable.

So why worry? Intelligent flyers (like flyertalkers, hint hint) know that CSA's and FA's and Rampers and Mechanics and even Pilots don't make the really stupid decisions. Management geeks do that. And they'd never admit it to us, and they certainly wouldn't fly coach.