Yesterday morning I arrived at the airport, checked in and headed to the gate. The airport does not have screens to check the standby list so I pulled it up on my phone. On the non-rev standby list I was #2 out of two active employees with four retirees/other and one buddy. When i clicked on the airport standby list there were two S2 ahead of me, listed as S3. I looked at the names and clicked back and saw that they were retiree/other. I was a little concerned because there were only two seats available. A short time later they were called up and given the last two seats. I was 99% sure retirees do not get vacation passes so I decided to ask them about it. I introduced myself and asked the question and the wife responded "I don't know how we are listed, my daughter is an employee and she did it for us".
I did end up getting on the flight due to missing revenue passengers, but I still want to know how an employee's parents traveled on vacation passes. If I had missed that flight I would have been there for several extra hours and would not have been a happy camper.
Any ideas on how they did this?