ID90 or ZED

Z

zp18zp18

New Member
I am an American Airlines D2 Parent living in Manila.

American Airlines does not have routes to the Philippines.

I am planning a mid-October trip to the States.

The cost for round trip from Manila to Japan + non-rev AA fees is about the same as a retail purchased ticket because of the high fare to/from Japan.

As I understand it, in order to get an ID90 fare I must go to an AA agent to request and pay for the ticket assuming AA has an agreement with that airline. Since there are no AA agents in the Philippines, how does one handle this?

Also, I understand the ZED procedure is to purchase a ticket which is sort of an "open ticket" to use when needed? So how would this work? And I searched all around trying to find the ZED partners with AA but could not find a list anywhere. If someone can point me to this I would appreciate knowing.

I think the best approach for me would be a ZED fare on Philippine Airlines, since they fly non-stop between Manila and LAX? Is there any concurrence with those of you that are seasoned OAL travelers??

While my daughter has been an international F/A for more than 20 years, she has never used ID90 or ZED so her knowledge is limited in the mechanics of how each program works.


Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, GWB
 
ZED fares work between two city pairs and are normally good for 180 days (in general) from the date of purchase. To find out information about what ZEDs you (as a D2) acan use you will probably have to visit AA's employee non rev website. I am not in the AA system so I don't know the specifics of that. Somewhere there should be a list of airlines that you are eligible to ZED fare on and instructions on how to list. You are correct in thinking that you will have to go to an AA counter to get the tickets so it is possible your daughter will have to purchase it in the states and then mail it to you. It is also possible that it can be done as an E-Ticket but in the ZED system (especially in the States) those are few and far between. Once you get your ZED ticket for the Manila-LAX leg you can take that to the Philippine Airlines ticket counter and they will issue you a space available ticket to LAX.

Hopefully somebody in the AA system can chime in here with specifics.
 
Thanks for that input. I have looked at the city pairs available and determined that some airlines do not honor zed or id fares for parents, only employees and families so it is good to check. I read all that I could about ZED fares on the AA emp web site and the actual specifics about the mechanization of the process is pretty vague (for me at least).

I think I have the basics down;
  1. I find an airline that flies the route I want
  2. I find a flight on the date I want
  3. I send this to my daughter along with the $.
  4. She takes this to her AA counter where they validate everything and issue her a zed ticket (good for 180 days?) which she FedEx's to me (or can she just scan it and send me the scan???).
  5. On the day of the flight I take this zed ticket to the flying airlines counter where they convert it into a normal standby ticket. Is that pretty much it?
  • Now, if the flight has two legs, is that two zed tickets and two standbys? or will they normally confirm me on the second leg once I get a seat on the first leg?
  • Flying standby has always been a crap-shoot and especially bad when I have no idea of what the current loads are on the flying airline. What do seasoned ZED travelers do to minimize these problems? I have the option of flying on any day of the week of Oct 9th so I would like to pick a day when the likely-hood of getting a seat is high.
  • If my zed ticket says Tuesday and the flight ends up full, is my ticket ok to use on Wednesday? OR is my zed ticket just an authorization to fly on that airline and that flight sometime in the next 180 days and not tied into a specific date?
Thanks for your time in answering all these questions, I have been stuck overnight in US airports and it wasn't any fun, I am just trying to prevent that from happening if I can in an international airport.

It would also be great if some AA veteran ZED user could comment on the actual ticketing part using the AA employee web site. (or anything else)

If anyone prefers, they can message me directly through the message panel.

GWB
 
You've pretty much got it. Don't worry about what date you want to fly on once you figure out which city pair you are going to use. It's an open ticket so as long as it's used within the time frame allocated (180 days normally) you can use it on any day. Your daughter probably won't be able to scan the ticket and email it to you because it's (normally) an actual paper ticket. If it is an eticket she may be able to just send you the record locator number (it's the 6 digit code associated with the ticket) but I don't know if that would work or not, and as I said before, not many airlines outside of Europe are using etickets for ZEDs. If your flight has two legs it is possible to get a ZED fare for that route and you'd be able to do it on one ticket. Otherwise you'd need two ZEDs to do it. I tried to go San Francisco - Munich - Zurich last month, all on Lufthansa and had to get separate ZEDs for each leg. It is not always like that however. Even if you manage to get it all on one ZED, you will still be standby on each individual flight.

Again, hopefully an AAer can help you out with the specifics.
 
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