Buddy pass LAX to Germany
 

A united employee is offering me a buddy pass. I need to be in Germany before May 20th. I have a lot of time flexibility and am willing to suffer a bit. That time of the year, are the flights so full that I should forget it?
I was planning to leave a week before the 20th.
I have never done a buddy pass before and have some basic questions.
There are several routes to Germany, through chicago, houston, ny, texas and I can go to either frankfurt or munich. I assume that the day of the flight I would be making a bunch of decisions based on seats. What I do not understand is if it is me making these decisions or does my employee friend have to do it on my behalf. Obviously I dont want to annoy my friend and would rather deal with it myself.
Any advice?
Or should I just book thru orbitz and avoid the hassle?
Sorry to be such a noob...

Your friend should be the one to provide all this info for you regarding flight loads, if you will make the flight (or not) etc. FT is really not the place to ask about buddy passes flight loads etc.

Your employee has to make the reservation and set it all up. However, if I were you, I'd try and list for the 747 out of ORD and get lucky with a business seat. Good luck!

EDIT: Just realized you're leaving out of LAX. Obviously try for the LAX-FRA nonstop, but if full, I'd then go to SFO and try for one of those two flights daily on the 747!

Employee privileges --- i.e. - "Buddy Passes" SHOULD NOT be discussed on this forum as JOSECONLSCREW28 indicates. This should all be explained to the OP by the employee sponsoring the pass. Wanna screw up passes for your buddy, rely on information gained by people that should not be giving advice.

Your employee sponsor has all the info you will need. No need to ask here. :confused:

I'm surprised by the negative attitude toward our new friend. There's plenty of UA staff on this board who can answer his questions about how buddy passes work.

Plenty of questions could be answered off the forum, but are answered on the forum every day.

OP cannot use buddy pass on LH's LAX-FRA.

From my experience, mid-May is still a good time to nonrev to Europe. Late June, when summer vacation begins for the school kids, is really the time when nonrev travel to Europe is discouraged. Midweek (Mon-Thu) is better than Fri- Sun, ditto for the flight back. I would ask your friend about sample loads for a few days on SFO-FRA, just to get a feel about the chances. Good luck!

These questions are also going on a DL thread about buddy passes.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ve-thread.html

I posted on that thread.

The first link is about DL (available all over the net) and I believe UA has the same rules.

The second link covers all airlines.

I agree this should not be on FT, but a quick google search provides many answers. The person that gave you the pass should have explained this to you and they can check flt availability. I've used a buddy pass years ago, it was not my cup of tea. The employee is also responsible for your actions. Read the Delta buddy pass link above.

Happy travels.

My bad, I assumed UA had a nonstop from LAX.

I believe buddy passes given by a UA employee can only be used on UA metal or connection carriers. Again, as I stated above I used them once and being S4 is not fun. It is a gamble. That's why I moved to LAS, my odds are better.

To the OP, talk to the UA employee that gave you the buddy passes.

You are correct, only United and United Express. Did UA ever have a lax-fra in the past? I don't know why I assumed they did. Maybe I was thinking of lhr.

What is the rationale for not discussing it here?

To the OP-

In general, given that you have flexibility both in terms of when you go and how far in advance you are leaving, I think you should fairly easily be able to get there on the buddy pass. You will want help from your friend or another employee to check the specific flights you will be trying, but as you point out, there are many options to get between LAX and FRA or MUC on United metal, so if you start a few days in advance I think it should work.

My link above provides that answer:

http://travelinfo.delta.com/dlnonrev/Buddy_quette.pdf

The OP's contact should be the employee. This link is about DL, but I am sure UA, AA, US, WN etc. set the same type of rules.

I'm not seeing where it says anything that implies that the OP shouldn't try to find out some info on the internet from his/her internet friends. The idea that the "primary contact" is the employee is completely, utterly unrelated to asking a question here.

My primary contact for my tickets to XYZ event may be some customer relations person named Bob, but that doesn't mean I can't ask someone else what seats I should pick. I'm just not seeing the problem here... :confused: