can pilots and cabin crew travel anywhere in the world for free kind of
but it's not as easy as you think I'll explain it all coming up
hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me my name is Kelsey I'm a 747
pilot my channel 74 gear is all about aviation you may notice that I'm
obviously not in a hotel and that's because right after I finished that trip
from Spain where I did that collaboration I came down here to
Colombia to visit some friends of mine who were having a Halloween slash
birthday party and had a few days before I had to start work again so I'm in
their house filming a quick video for you guys and then I'm gonna go back to
work in a couple days I've been noticing a lot of comments for people asking if
I'm able to fly for free or if cabin crew are able to fly for free and we are
able to travel for free or almost free and there's three different ways we're
able to do it if you saw the video where I let my Instagram followers pick where
I went in the world and they ended up eventually choosing for me to go to
Spain I was able to fly there and back and it didn't cost me anything
lucky bastard first I'm gonna explain the three different ways we're able to
travel and then I'm gonna tell you the catch behind all of it because it's not
as easy as you might think let's get into it there's a generic term
that you between cabin crew and flight crew called jump seating and that's a
generic term that we use when wherever we're traveling somewhere we haven't
paid for a ticket what jump seating means is between one airline in another
airline they make an agreement between each other and they say our crew members
are able to travel on your planes empty seats if there's a seat available and
your crew are able to travel on our plane if there's an empty seat available
in its agreement that if there's a seat on the flight deck the a pilot from
another airline let's save me from another airline I'm able to ride in that
seat or if their seats in the back obviously we go and sit back there and I
know a lot of aviation enthusiasts out there if you had the opportunity to sit
in that jump seat for three hours up on the flight deck and watch everything you
would choose it and I know the first time I did it I was really excited but
after three hours sitting on that uncomfortable seat you're just like let
now the next way that we move for free is something called non Rev so if you're
flying on an airline that moves passengers what you do is non Rev on
that airline non Rev means non revenue you will be able to look at your
Airlines flight that you want to get on you can see how many seats are available
and that's generally what most pilots and cabin crew do when they're going to
try to catch a flight for free they look at their own airline for two reasons one
you can see how many available seats are on there and two you're gonna have a
priority when you're flying on your own aircraft we refer to it as flying on
your own metal so anytime that I'm going somewhere that I want to go on my own
time I always look first at my airline what seats are available and then I go
on and start looking at what other options there are now massive
thunderstorm just moved in overhead so it's gonna get a little dark in here and
hopefully it doesn't start thundering before we finish this video the third
way that we're able to travel is something called a Zed fare if my
airlines not going in an airline that my airline has a jump seat agreement with
is not going somewhere I can do something called a Zed fare and what
that means is I'm able to fly on an airline where we don't have a jump seat
agreement but there is an agreement between airlines where I can buy a
ticket for a very very reduced price so as an example if I wanted to go to
somewhere like Dubai if my airline did not fly there I could look at an airline
like Emirates Emirates obviously flies to Dubai and I'd be able to purchase a
ticket to Dubai from whatever place that they are flying from and I'd be able to
purchase that at a reduced fare than what you would typically see available
to your general public and typically you'll always see flight crew members
and cabin crew using the dead fare because at the end of the day we're used
to being able to travel for free so we want to get there as cheaply as possible
you cheap bastard so before you quit your job and think
that you're gonna be able to just fly around the world for free or near free
here's the catch behind it all all of these things the jump seat non-revenue
and zed fare you are the last person to get on the aircraft if you saw that
video I did where I went to Spain I was talking about man I hope I'm able to get
on this flight and that's because at any time if someone purchased as a full fare
ticket you're going out make it on the flight and that includes
if you're on a Zed fare if somebody walks up in the last couple hours and
purchases a ticket you may not be able to make it on that flight and now you
need to go to a plan B or Plan C to get to your destination when I was coming
back from Spain and I didn't actually put this in the vlog but when I was
coming back from Spain there was a bunch of empty seats I had a friend of mine
who works at American look up to see how many seats were available and she said
there's a lot of empty seats but when I got there about 30 or 40 tickets had
been purchased in the last 10 or 15 hours and I almost didn't make it on
that flight so I was sitting there waiting at the gate hoping I was gonna
be able to make it on that flight so I could get back to Miami so I could come
down here to Colombia so I could come here for my friend's party sounds tough
the thing is is when you're doing the jump seat or non Rev or Zed fare you can
get bumped for anything it could be passengers it could be fuel it could be
cargo some airlines are moving cargo in the belly or their aircraft and that
obviously is paying Freight so there's been times where there's empty seats
available and I still can't get on the aircraft so it's not a guarantee that
you're gonna make it so it's really important you understand that if you do
into becoming a flight crew member or a cabin crew member you're not always
going to be able to make every flight even if there are seats available so
what I do is I treat the entire thing like an adventure
there was once a flight that I was supposed to get on there was a bunch of
empty seats it was on my airline online metal so I knew I was gonna be able to
get a seat right before I was getting ready time to board the airlines sit
computer systems crashed and I was stuck in Cincinnati for about 12 hours I ended
up finding a cot getting into a corner and then using some blankets to build a
tent to have this dark space so I could go to sleep for four or five hours but
if you treat the entire thing like an adventure it's kind of fun if you like
sleeping on a cot in my corner of an airport if you can consider that fun
then it's fun how was that fun if you didn't see the video where I let all my
Instagram followers pick for me to go to Spain and I had about 24 hours to plan
it out I'll put a video link to it right here I look forward to hearing from you
until then keep the blue side up