Flailey

I'm booking travel for a group of six of us going to Colorado in a couple months. One of the nice young ladies is family of an AA employee (mom's manager of an AC) and so she gets to standby and fly for free on any flight she wants, though of course he getting on the flight depends on quite a bit. Though she's done it many times in her life she really has no idea how it works, she's always just gone to the airport in the morning, said I want to go to XXX, and seen what happens, which almost invariably is that she gets there at some point. Lives in NYC, family in california, so she just budgets a day to get home and always has.

This time though she's in a group of us, and I'm buying tickets for everyone. Though we'll deal with whatever happens, given the driving involved once we land it would sure be good to not have 5 other people wait around for hours at the airport if she doesn't fly with us. On the other hand we don't want to send her to the airport at 6am and have her wait for us, etc.

So the question -- for those here who are in the same boat (someone, presumably?) -- is what's the best strategy here. I figured checking EF in the morning to see how bad things are would be a start. But what I'm curious about is what priority for standby a non-rev family member has, are they ahead of EXPs or at the absolute back of the line? And other tips that people in this position have used, needless to say having her on our flights would be ideal. We're going to fly mid-day flights, most likely... this far out it's impossible to know which ones will be more full than the others. It's probably unethical but would it make sense to buy a refundable ticket for the flight we're all on and then just refund it while she's standing there trying to get cleared off the list? Any other ideas?

TIA