Originally Posted by
goodandclassy
ZED = zonal employee discount program
it's quite awesome. There are zones based on mileage and tiers based on price
your 'home' carrier has agreements with other airlines on a price tier - so for example, AS and BA are zed-medium, but US Air and BA are zed-high (it's pricier for a us air employee to fly BA than for AS employee on the same city paid)
so, for example, you get a ZM ticket for a certain "zone" - a range of miles. you can fly any zed-medium carrier on any route within that number of miles (or up to the upper limit of the zone you paid for)
it is pretty sweet for flexible routing...
problem is, many people are unaware of its workings, so then you ahve to educate a prissy lufthansa woman on why she should let you board lhr-fra with a ticket that say prg-mow, for example
p.s. oddly enough, alaska has a little handy dandy chart
Code:
Zone Mileage ZL ZM ZH
1 1- 450 $15 $23 $28
2 451- 750 $18 $28 $39
3 751-1600 $24 $34 $47
4 1601-3200 $35 $48 $73
5 3201-4080 $42 $57 $96
6 4081-5000 $45 $64 $109
7 5001-6100 $53 $67 $114
8 6101-7100 $66 $81 $140
9 7101-9000 $69 $92 $156
http://www.alaskasworld.com/%5CTravel%5CWhat_is_ZED.pdf
oddly enough, they say that the city pair must remain the same, but the carrier may differ, as long as there is an agreement... maybe that lufty lady was correct... pfff.. i still got my way :-D
Our travel department (US) says that airlines may choose to refuse a ZED issued for a different city pair than you are traveling, or they may choose to accept it. Apparently the main reason has to do with taxes, which can vary significantly for different routes in the some zone. For example, at US we have ZED-medium agreements with both AA and BA. In theory, I could book a ZED LGA-DCA on AA, with incredibly low taxes, then use it on BA for LHR-CDG. The problem that arises, though, is that there are incredibly low taxes on a US domestic flight, while the LHR-CDG flight would incur UK APD, among other taxes, making the total cost much higher. Even without the change in airlines this issue arises. If the tickets were always accepted for the same zone without regard to city pair, nobody would ever book a JFK-LHR r/t ZED... they'd book 2 JFK-LHR o/w passes and avoid the APD.