A "buddy pass" is an employee benefit. They can allow friends/family of Delta employees to fly standby if space is available. While a great deal if you are flexible on travel plans, when weather cancels flights or demand fills seats, you may be stuck for several days waiting for an available seat.

As an example anyone trying to get to PDX or SEA (or anywhere else within a 6 hour drive of those two cities) on a buddy pass or any Non-Rev benefits arent going to be flying until at least X-mas day if not later

All embargos except for Lagos, Nigeria have been lifted

I didnt realize that AMM and JNB/DKR/CPT were such popular destinations for buddy pass riders...any idea why that is...or is it just tourism oriented? Didnt know if there was an abnormal amount of DL employees living in those cities.

Its the getting stuck at a location issue that keeps buddy passes from being allowed to certain cities. Buddy passes do not offer the option of flying on a ZED fare with another airline which severely limits the amount of options a buddy pass has.

How are buddy pass riders treated on board...do they receive any unusual treatment from FAs? May be using one to JNB soon and was wondering if they are extra snippy with wine refills (for example). It makes perfect sense for NRSAs to get last dibs on meal choice, etc. Even though Im on a buddy pass, there's no way to show that Im a PM on the same PNR is there?

What is a ZED fare? Have flown on multiple airline's buddy passes, ID90s, ID75s ID00s, etc etc but have never even heard the term "ZED"

Well that must mean that AMM is doing EXTREMELY well for DL considering this restriction..even more so than mainstay destinations like CDG/LON/FCO...(we already knew that South Africa was quite popular)...but I didnt realize that AMM generated that much interest and pax traffic to warrant an embargo considering no other destination except for LOS was mentioned (in this thread).

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
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

Its more of a cargo issue than a pax issue, similar to some of the South American routes. What usually happens is that there appear to be plenty of seats on the plane (via seatcounter or deltanet) but revenue management has already planned/allocated some of those seats (or the weight for those seats) to cargo. Non-Revs look at the seats and say I can get on this flight without an issue, yet the plane pushes with them still watching from the airport.

As an example DL only flys one flight 3x per week from AMM to anywhere in the US. All other flights are AF or some other codeshare that buddy passes cant get on.

Nope. When you travel on employee benefits you have no "status" and I wouldnt play the PM card if you ran into an issue. You are traveling on the buddy pass givers benefits and it is possible to get their travel benefits taken if you pull the DYKWIA with medallion status.

Treatment depends 100% on flight crew but IMHO and experience other than a last choice of meals you get the same treatment as any other PAX (especially in J where DL wants their travelers to not standout). I've burned through two bottles of port between JFK and BUD one time when I couldnt sleep.

Awesome explanataion, thanks! Why wouldnt DL choose to reflect that in the seat count though....seems like it would "smooth" over a lot of feathers that way...at least non-rev wise.

It all comes down how you present yourself. Despite the dress code having been relaxed, I always stick to the old dress code when flying non-rev (=dress pants and dress shirt being a minimum). Except for the meal choice issue, I actually felt taken care of even better than as a PM. This especially holds true if you gotta suck it up in Y rather than J or F.

As for alcohol consumption, I've never had any experience with being denied any refills - the only thing I can tell you that my buddies at Delta have told me is that if you start to appear intoxicated, any good crew will cut you off the alcohol supply instantaneously.

But as long as you behave like a regular business traveller with good manners, you certainly will enjoy the inflight experience (except for the meal issue as previously mentioned) to the fullest extent.

No, there isn't. As a matter of fact, it's prohibited.

The Lufthansa folks are well aware of its workings, since most Lufthansa employees have to use it as well when flying on one of their Star Alliance partners.

As for you particular case, if the underlying ticket of your ZED deal was issued by your airline (=not LH) and you change origin+destination, you need to have your airline reissue the ticket for you. Lufthansa can't do it.

No need to give Lufthansa a hard time - especially since their check-in system instantaneously clears you onto the flight if the revenue forecast has the flight departing with many empty seats. They don't make you sweat it until the gate if they don't have to, which is very nice...

Just in order not to confuse anybody - buddy pass riders are not eligible for ZED fares.

Because the seat count is based on the revenue seats available. Delta will most certainly accept a paying passenger on a high fare for example, but not a non-rev traveller paying (close to) nothing... so there is no way to adjust the seat count.

As a matter of fact, some stations even have to offer VDB to paying pax in some cases to get the cargo on - despite the plane not being full...

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.