The general term used for those with confirmed seats whether or not they're paying passengers is "positive space."

Every airline has positive space pass classifications for various purposes, deadheading pilots being one of them.

Many people confuse "deadheading" with "commuting," and they are not the same thing. Deadheading means that the airline is sending you somewhere other than your crew base to pick up a trip (or back to your crew base after you've done it). In other words, they're sending you someplace other than where you "work" because they need you there, so getting you there and back is "on them." That's deadheading. Because they need you to be there, they make damn sure you have a reserved seat ("positive space").

Commuting means that the employee (pilot or FA) lives somewhere other than where they're based, and they're flying to and from work. That travel is "on them," and on these flights they are NRSA.

Every airline has a "pecking order" within its NRSA universe. Commuting pilots are further up that chain than "buddies," for obvious reasons. Plus, pilots generally have jumpseat priviliges, which means that if the flight is literally full, there are still one or two jumpseats in the cockpit where they may sit with the approval of the captain of that flight. Captains almost always approve, if for no other reason than every so often they need a jumpseat themselves! Pilots also sometimes "jumpseat" freight flights.

You might ask, "well, the airline needs you to to be at your base when it's time to go to work just as much as they need you someplace else when they deadhead you there. So why isn't commuting also positive space?" The airlines' answer is that it's your choice to live away from your base. Choices have consequences. They feel they have more than met the employees halfway by granting unlimited NRSA priviliges on an interline cooperative basis. Beyond that, they contend that getting to work is part of the conditions of employment.

For over a dozen years, I logged over a hundred thousand miles per year flying on company basis on a positive-space basis (working in a technology capacity). However, although I was always flying on company business, on my airline, my positive-space status did NOT guarantee me a seat.

Deadheading crew and others essential to a flight (such as, say, a specialized mechanic flying out to fix a tough problem on a stranded plane) were given a "must-ride" designation, and were never subject to bumping.

I and others like me, however, were indeed subject to being removed from a flight in order to seat a revenue passenger. We did, however, have priority over any NRSA, and were in line to be upgraded to first class if any F seats were left after all eligible revenue passengers had been accommodated.

Jeans are not within the dress code for first class NRSA travel on most airlines. Period. It may well be that the GA, in saying that F was full, was simply trying to avoid embarrassing this person by telling her that she was inappropriately dressed.

See, the issue isn't whether she was dressed "decently," the issue is whether she was dressed according to the requirements of the dress code. Actually, it was probably the fault of the "UA employee for over 10 years" for not knowing these requirements and seeing to it that her friend adhered to them.

But in any event, it appears that the friend did OK. She got to go to the RCC, got a nice breakfast, and got a free or nearly free ride to Chicagoland. Everybody should be so lucky.

They still do.