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Having been the last person issued a boarding pass by the gate agent, I was hustled onto the aircraft and told to sit in any available main-cabin seat. I slid sideways down the single aisle, scanning the split sea of contorting faces, careful not to whack heads with my shoulder bag, hoping there was an aisle or window seat available, praying, believing -- and ultimately stung with a dose of reality when I finally found the last remaining seat in coach. It was a center seat in the very last row. A seat flanked by two beefy business types who rolled their eyes maliciously when I stopped, cleared my throat and shrugged my shoulders in apology.

Because my carry-on was small, finding space for it in an overhead bin was a cinch. I squeezed into my seat, closed my eyes and began to pray. I prayed not for a safe flight, and not for the strength to withstand a six-hour squeeze between two fleshy bookends. I prayed instead to hear the agent's departure announcement. To hear the distant clamber of the aircraft door being closed and locked. To feel the head-tingling rush of cabin pressurization and the reassuring voice of a flight attendant welcoming us aboard. In other words, I was anxious to pull away from the jet bridge. I was an airline employee traveling on a company pass, and experience had taught me that it's almost never too late to get bumped from a flight.

Airline employees traveling on a company pass fall into a category known as "non-revenue" passengers. We're the lowest of the low in the onboard pecking order -- and justifiably so: beneath ticketed revenue passengers, standby revenue passengers, deadheading crew members, employees traveling on decreasingly important levels of company business and non-revenue passengers who were smart enough to check in before their last-minute brethren.

Each airline has its own non-revenue service-charge policy. Some allow their employees to travel free of charge. Others charge a flat fee. Many impose a nominal service charge based on the number of miles flown. The cost for my one-way trip from New York to L.A., including taxes? Fifteen dollars and change. From the United States to Europe? About $50 each way. Asia? A few dollars more. Adding more sugar to an already sweetened pot, more than 100 airline companies participate in an interline agreement that allows employees from one airline to travel on another airline's planes at a spectacular discount. Depending on the airlines involved, payment is either 10 percent or 20 percent of the highest unrestricted airfare. We travel on perpetual standby, hoping for an empty airplane seat.

The irony, of course, is that the starting salary for flight attendants (the one airline employee group with a work schedule flexible enough to take full advantage of airline industry travel benefits) is so low that we can't do much at a non-rev destination until after six or seven years on the job. It's true. A few years back a group of New York-based flight attendants made the front page of the New York Times after applying for, and receiving, food stamps. The carrot dangling in front of an aspiring flight attendant is not wrapped in money. Rather, it is dipped in the elixir of free travel -- a perk I was so desperately trying to taste on my ill-fated flight from New York to L.A.

During the final stage of boarding, especially on full flights like the one I had just entered, non-revs huddle around the departure desk, waiting like anxious game-show contestants to hear our name called over the intercom. "Peterson ... Morisette ... Jankovic ..." Jankovic? We shoot daggers at the Jankovic who was just issued a boarding pass, feeling certain that we checked in before her, feeling lied to, cheated. We wonder if she is the agent's cousin. Most of the time, this is not the case. Most of the time the process flows smoothly if not fairly. But occasionally things do go wrong. Mistakes are made. And who are we to complain? It's not like an employee can puff up his or her chest and threaten to take the business elsewhere.

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