Austrian Airlines Fires Employee Who Sold 1,000+ Staff Tickets In A Year

There’s a bit of a scandal at Austrian Airlines, as the Lufthansa Group carrier has reportedly uncovered quite the scheme, as reported by MeinBezirk.

Austrian cracks down on violations of flight benefit rules

One of the main perks of working in the airline industry is flight benefits. These come in a variety of forms, ranging from space available travel for employees, to discounted tickets for family and friends of employees.

Along those lines, Austrian has issued an internal memo, warning of repercussions for misuse of these benefits. The airline has been performing an investigation in recent times, in order to crack down on those who are violating the rules in order to enrich themselves.

The investigation seems to center the most around the resale of PEP and staff travel tickets, with employees selling these to third parties, in order to make a buck (or, well, lots of bucks). The memo warns of “several serious violations,” “primarily in connection with PEP tickets.”

The worst offender was one individual who is said to have sold more than 1,000 PEP tickets to third parties in 2025 alone (and there are more than three months left in the year!). He reportedly charged others up to €2,000 per ticket for booking these flights.

Per the memo, “misuse not only violates our internal regulations, but may also constitute fraud,” and “therefore, not only disciplinary measures but also criminal prosecution are threatened – this is not a trivial offense.” The airline is now systematically reviewing how these kinds of tickets have been booked, both for past and future travel. The airline is encouraging employees who have violated the rules to turn themselves in proactively.

For those not familiar, “PEP” stands for “product experience program,” and they’re special, discounted, capacity controlled fares offered by some airlines to employees of the travel industry. It’s not entirely clear how this employee managed to book so many tickets for others, in terms of name verification, etc. I imagine there was some glitch in the system that allowed this in a way that it shouldn’t have.

Airline employees selling flight benefits is not uncommon

Obviously the abuse here was next-level, in terms of someone booking 1,000 tickets over the course of nine months. That sounds like more than a full time job, in and of itself.

That being said, the concept of industry employees profiting off of their flight benefits (for non-personal use) is nothing new. For example, in the United States, most airlines will let employees appoint a companion to receive full flight benefits. The intent is that if you’re in a relationship, you can give it to that person.

Many airline employees take a different approach, and there’s a not-insignificant number of airline employees who will sell their companion spot. I mean, talk about the ultimate “companion pass,” being able to fly systemwide on an airline like Delta, including in business class.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. There’s obviously a difference between appointing one companion and receiving compensation for it, vs. reselling 1,000 tickets over the course of nine months.

Bottom line

Austrian Airlines is cracking down on employees selling flight benefits, and is even telling employees to turn themselves in proactively, if they’ve violated the rules. It seems that one employee, in particular, sold over 1,000 tickets for a profit this year alone, and the year isn’t even over!

While airline employees violating rules when it comes to staff tickets is nothing new, this abuse is definitely on a different level.

What do you make of this Austrian staff travel scandal?