Awitness - 8/21/2012 3:11 PM 1 Vote Report User I heard They landed safe and sound in VA and are so appreciative of everyone who helped. If you watch the video you can see clearly thay aren't blaming anybody. To the idiot who said they should have their children taken away has serious issues! What a disgusting and heartless comment to make. I spent time with this family and they were so sweet and dont deserve those kind of comments. Thank God for the person who bought them tickets home and the family did say they would def "pay it forward". They also admitted to making a mistake and should have never used the buddy passes it was their 1st time flying and had no idea what they were getting into. But oh was that little boy so adorable and i felt so bad for the young girl! So happy Nikee, Curtis, Sadee, and little cutie-pie Dominic made it home safely! I'm sure they learned their lesson and will never use a buddy pass again even if that means not being able to visit his mother/grandmother. Its sad the airlines jack up the prices on traveling and luggage its hard to fly when you have only a short period of vacation time from work and from what i heard straight from the families mouths is this father works a lot to take care of his family. He thought this was an opportunity for his 4yr old son to finally meat his other grandmother for the 1st time. Some ppl have no love in their hearts and want to hurt this families feelings but im just going to focus on the ppl who have empathy and care about the two innocent children in all this and say God Bless and you're good souls. I dont see hwere the family blames jetblue at all,i watched both videos and they said no such thing. It was jetlue's employees who came and commented and said awful things about the Saxton family. Shame on you and shame on jetblue for not even giving the baby a pillow or a blanket! And i found that out via jetblue, maybe you should have a little talk with your pr person jetblue cause they suck!

@yboocs: Some of the posts directed at you by airline employees were definitely uncalled for, you are certainly not expected to understand how things work. However, I'll explain how they work, and hopefully you will understand the outrage these airline employees are expressing. A buddy pass allows you to occupy an empty seat. The whole idea is that you fly-by unnoticed, just as if the seat had been empty. As an airline employee, the first thing you are told, is that you must be extremely careful with how you use your buddy passes... this is because if you ever use them the wrong way, you will lose your travel privileges FOR LIFE. So, each time we go to the airport, we make sure to not be a burden on the staff, the airline, the airport employees, and especially, the other passengers. We are extremely careful to whom we give our passes, because, if they use them irresponsibly, its US who LOSE our passes FOR LIFE. So, we try to travel with extreme discretion. We try our best to be unnoticed, and will often turn down the perks regular passengers get simply to make the life of the airline employees easier ie: no meal, no beverage, no help, we try to make it as though that seat on the plane we were allowed to use was still unoccupied. We also, as airline employees, understand that there is NEVER a guarantee we can come home. In fact, often, we often get stuck at airports, and I've personally footed bills 3 or 4 times the price of a full-fare ticket simply to cover my hotel bills in cities such as Osaka/Tokyo/New York/Paris etc. The last thing you want to do when you are given the privilege of interline travel, is rock that boat! As other people mentioned, we are extremely thankful for this privilege and would hate to see it disappear due to a few bad apples. The folks in this ABC 4 story, unfortunately, managed to get themselves in the spotlight. They definitely did not fly-by unnoticed using empty seats! As an ex-airline employee, believe me, I miss my passes!

Sorry but they should know better. When using buddy passes its cheap and you know you are standby. It's a risk you take. If you are broke and can't afford to go, then DON'T travel! It's that simple. Smarten up buddy

Perhaps those of you upset with how this story was reported based on the research done by the reporters at the news station should redirect your comments and hostility to Morgan Johnston the JetBlue Spokesperson who was contacted for the story.

Maybe ABC news should get themselves educated about buddie passes before they jump on a story like this one. As for this family, I hope that they and others like them are not extended the privilege of using any employees buddie passes in the future. It requires patience and self control to use that system with any airline...and a whole lot of gratitude. Airline employees have been raked through the coals for the last decade in so many ways. This idiotic story about one of the last great perks that remain in this industry will hopefully not be the impetus for a change in that as well.

To comment made by yboocs: You are an uninformed idiot! A buddy pass is not a "RIGHT". It is a "PRIVILEGE" given to hard working Airline employees to offer to their friends and or family. This family should have gone online to check the availability beforehand. In the same way they booked their practically FREE flight, they could have checked on how many seats were available. Totally irresponsible. Especially when you are traveling with children. The employee that gave them the buddy passes should loose their privileges as well. How ignorant this family must be to involve the new media. There is no entitlement for a non-revenue customer. Very poor planning. NOT the airlines fault, whatsoever!! I hope you (yboocs) are never on a flight I'm on. You are not very bright either. As far as the "stranded" family, I would love to give them a piece of my mind.

Ybocs: You are stating as if these passes can be purchased by the general public off the website or through reservations. THEY CANNOT. The way to obtain these passes is THROUGH AN EMPLOYEE. The employee only gets a certain allotment of these passes per year. They do not carry over year-to-year. So, yes, we expect those who are using them to know what they are doing and to know an intricate knowledge about what cities are the worst to fly out of and which are the easiest. Again these passes are ONLY ISSUED INTERNALLY. ONLY EMPLOYEES CAN GET THEM. You can't walk up to an airline's ticket counter and buy buddy passes.

Ybocs: Buddy passes are not marketed to the general public. It is a perk given to employees so they can essentially bring their friends along when they go on vacation. No guarantees are implied with these passes. If anything goes wrong on these passes you are SOL. Secondly, jetBlue owes NOTHING to this passenger. It is written in my employee handbook (and taught in class moreover) that if it extremely busy you help the paying customers first. The "non-rev" employees get helped last, workload permitting. The "non-rev" traveller can be directed to either the employee who issued the pass or to the pass bureau (a 1-800 number) they can call. By the way, we employees don't expect the general public to know all the ins and outs of "non-rev" travel since the airline does not issue these passes to them. We expect the employee to know and educate the ones they are issuing these passes to. We also expect those who use them to behave themselves and comport themselves with a modicum of knowledge AND NOT RUN TO THE MEDIA BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT GET ON A STANDBY FLIGHT. The reason a lot of us are pissed off at this family is because this is one perk that we jealously protect. We earn next to nothing, work extremely long hours, and have to deal with a extremely hostile public. This is one perk that makes all that semi-bearable and anything that could jeopardize that will get a swift and assertive reaction (especially when stupidity is involved). Everyone in the industry knows the game and knows how to play it. This family apparently didn't know. They could have spent that 5 days hopscotching across the country to get home and probably would been delayed at most 2 days if they had decided to "think outside the box" and maybe go west and then east to get home.

I am amazed at how extremely rude those who work in the airline industry are because that is who most of these comments appear to be from. I'm glad that channel 4 did this story. I see many comments that this is not news but it is. I for one was not aware of these buddy passes and how they work. I've only had to fly twice but if I ever needed to again and had an opportunity to fly at a discount on standby I probably would have, until hearing this news story. I'm also surprised that those leaving comments are upset that people would share with others their experiences. I've worked in customer service in several different industries and that is Customer Service 101, a customer is more likely to share a negative experience than a positive one. JetBlue had a chance to make a positive impression and chose not to. Sure this time it is non-revenue but what about the next time this family wants to fly again. They know better now not to use buddy passes to fly, so they save their money and can now afford full fare tickets. Are they going to choose the airline that treated them poorly? Maybe JetBlue should make more public how they feel about non-revenue customers to avoid media attention in the future. Why do those of you that have commented that work in the airline industry expect the general public to have all this inside knowledge of how things work? How is everyone else to know which location is the companies busiest or which route is going to have the most standbys. Again that is where the airline could have shined with excellent customer service and offered options to the stranded customer and not just see someone as revenue or non-revenue. I agree on earlier comments made in regards to buddy passes, if the airline knows the busiest time of travel then put blackout dates to prevent people from using the passes when there is no chance that they will be put on a flight. Lastly why do people insult others? You are all 100% perfect 100% of the time?

this idiot shoud be given a citation from social servics for making his chldren stay for days in an airport eating junk food. He is completely iresponsible and obviously not very intelligent, On top of that, that fact that this stoy made it on your news program shows how desperate you are for any tipe of story, I cant believe you were stupid enough to call this news.