Yes this is exactly what we are saying. No one said confirmed staff travel in J. The point was made that often EF might show 6 seats in J, then when the flight boards, that number drops to zero. Which ties back to the original point, that the reason you may not see any of these people in the lounge is because they are sitting at the service desk waiting for the russian roulette to begin!
EF doesn't show upgrade requests from revenue passengers either so that may be another reason for a dramatic drop in the seats shown as available in J close to departure.
Only after all forms of upgrade requests have been processed (classic reward upgrades, upgrade bids and on departure requests) are any staff regraded to J.
How this is done varies depending on the departure port and it all changed recently to allow staff to checkin online.
If there is clearly space available, you may not have to play russian roulette at the service desk anymore.
But the principle is the same: a revenue PAX would never be denied an upgrade in favour of staff*.
Every aspect of staff travel remains subject to availability, and staff are just as likely to be thrown off the flight at the last minute as they are to be upgraded.
I was once unable to return from ADL-PER on staff travel on VA and tried to be clever by flying ADL-MEL then MEL-PER.
Only to be stranded in MEL overnight. By the time I paid for a hotel room the trip cost me more than a revenue ticket would have.
And I had to explain to work why I did not turn up the next morning.
On another occassion in Paris I had to choose between checking in immediately and sitting in Y or waiting to see if a PAX would be a no show for F.
The EY checkin staff knew he was coming up from Nice and the TGV had been delayed by bad weather.
But they had to wait for him until F checkin closed at T-30 - by which time it would be too late to check me in for Y.
Being stranded for an extra day in Paris is not something I would have regarded as a hardship so I took the risk.
I sat anxiously for the hour after Y checkin closed, dreading that an Emirati would come flying through the door at any moment.
When checkin closed and he had not shown up I was given the coveted F boarding pass and then literally told to sprint to the aircraft!
Just on Wednesday I checked in for a long haul international flight online, expecting to see a full flight and was instead issued a J boarding pass.
Not something I wanted to pass up so I literally decided to travel, showered, shaved, packed, checked out of my hotel and was in a taxi to the airport in 23 minutes.
Only to be put back on standby at checkin, told to wait at the gate until boarding finished, and then being given a W boarding pass at the last minute.
Obviously I didn't ask to be offloaded and risk their wrath for delaying departure while they found my bag!
Staff travel is an incredible privilege but it does have its downside.
*When I refer to "staff" I am referring to staff on leisure travel, not to staff on duty travel or to the inner coterie of senior executives.
) for days due to loads and not even a middle seat back of Y available.
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