Ok, my little brother has a long question about jumpseating, which I am relaying here:

I fly for Pinnacle out of JFK, and I tried to get back to Canada the other day, only I missed the one Pinnacle flight because I got held longer on reserve than I wanted to (with Pinnacle it's really easy, I just list online and pay the taxes online, which are like 30 bucks round trip).

So I go to the American ticket counter and say "Hi, I am a Pinnacle pilot and I wanna jumpseat or non-rev to Canada on the American Eagle flight this evening". Ticket agent takes all my info, does some work on his computer for like 15 minutes, then shakes his head "sorry we don't have an 'agreement' with Pinnacle to do that". He couldn't really give me a straight answer why I couldn't just pay the 30 dollars or so for taxes then just ask the captain if I can ride along like I would domestically.

Sooo, Plan B. I go to the United/Continental ticket counter at KJFK and ask them "Hey, before I go over to Newark to try to get on this flight, can I, as a Pinnacle Pilot, jumpseat or non-rev on one of these continental connection flights up to Halifax, even though it is international?" They are really confused, but make some phone calls and eventually give me a for sure "yes, just show up".

So I subway over to Newark, get to the gate for the flight (it's Shuttle American on a E170 I think), and ask the gate agent "Hey, can I get on this flight to Halifax" he gives me an emphatic "no", and explains something about passport verification being the reason why I can't jumpseat or non-rev. I ask about the later flight on Expressjet, and he gives me the same answer. He tells me to go to the Delta ticket counter, and they can do something. So I do that, and explain to the lady that I wanna get on one of these flights to Halifax and she says ok let me see what I can do. She fiddles on the computer for a few minutes and shakes her head saying "sorry 'we' don't have an agreement with 'them'" (not sure if 'we' is Delta or Pinnacle, and 'them' is Expressjet, Shuttle America or Continental). She didn't really give me much information nor could she explain about ZED fares as a possibility.

Dejected, I subway my sorry ass back across NY to my crashpad near JFK (5 trains, over an hour and like 25 bucks each way).

So my questions are: as a Pinnacle Pilot, can I jumpseat or non-rev on Shuttle America, Expressjet, American eagle or Air Wisconsin (these are the airlines that fly all year long to my hometown) to Canada. If so, what is the procedure for doing this. Asking ticket or gate agents this question seems to give them brain aneurisms, and 5 different ones gave me 5 different answers.

Thanks for your help!