One of the perquisites that the airline industry provides to its employees is free or discounted travel. Since the traveller in this case is the "staff" of a particular airline, the benefit is widely known as "staff travel" and is either offered internally within a company or by independent companies like StaffTravel.eu By and large, staff travel does not bring much revenue to the airline and is hence referred to as nonrev in some parts of the world.
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The airline industry sees staff travel to be one of the most sought after motivational and retention strategies. On the flip side, most of the staff travel that happens in the industry is standby. This would mean that a confirmed seat is not given to the staff member for this travel. (Rather, a listing and no booking happens for staff travel). This makes staff travel unpredictable and there are chances of the staff being "bumped off" from the flight, in case the flight is full and there are revenue passengers to be catered to. However, it is common practice for some gate agents to discreetly accommodate a friend hoping to travel non-rev by bumping another non-rev flier, or even a revenue passenger, from a full flight.
Since the staff travel is a privilege given to the employee, most airlines also maintain a policy for administering staff travel. The staff travel function generally comes under Human Resources (HR) and in some cases under Customer Services or Marketing. If the airline's employees are numerous enough, a separate department is also maintained to cater to this process.
In most airlines the staff travel department (also referred to as Pass Bureau) handles all the activities related to staff travel. Leisure travel (standby and confirmed) for employees, spouse and dependants, companions and or domestic partners, Leisure travel for executives, Furlough travel, retiree travel, travel for dependants of deceased employees - all of this comprise the regular activities of staff travel department.
Yet another major activities that comes under the purview of staff travel department is duty travel (also referred to as business travel). This would involve arrangement of flight, accommodation and car rentals (at times) for employees who travel on company business. These travel may be on own airlines or another airlines depending on the travel destination. Unlike leisure travel that the employee does at their own will, business travel is more critical because (a) employees are travelling on business purposes and ensuring a smooth service to them becomes important (b) there is a cost involved and optimising it is critical.
Apart from this, the staff travel department also becomes responsible for consultant travel (arrangements for visiting consultants to the airline - which may be grouped along with business travel) and travel of temporary employees. Other activities that may be done by the staff travel department include, Jumpseat Travel, Vendor Travel, travel agency travel, deadhead travel. At times, the responsibilities related to staff travel for a partner airline may also be handled by the main airline's staff travel desk.
The touch points of the staff travel team within an airline organisation includes, HR team, Payroll, Revenue accounting, Finance and IT. The staff travel services get used by almost everyone in the organisation and the retirees too. Being an internal service department, the staff travel team is often evaluated based on the feedback from the staff. Maintaining positive public relations and keeping the employees happy remains one of the key goals of this team.
Some of the challenges that staff travel team faces include, the high volume manual process, cost, resources (manpower and materials), having a proper form of payment, revenue analysis, employee relations and communication, and limited operating hours. Other difficuties include: the cumbersome refund processes associated with staff travel, assessing eligibility (or lack of), assessing applicable taxes, taking Credit Card and security issues sounding Form of Payment (FoP), record keeping, Interline Pricing and taxes, interline billing, accruing IT help to automate the process and the development cost in automating staff travel.