Originally Posted by
MN8V8R
ZED tickets are probably the most common. It stands for Zonal employee discount and is based on a pre-determined mileage between city pairs. For example LAX-SFO would be one of the lowest mileage zones and have a pretty low fare while LAX-DXB would be a higher mileage and therefore a higher fare. Each zone has a low, medium, and high category. Employees and immediate family seem to pay the medium fare and I see often that employee parents pay the high fare. There’s usually a coach category of fares and then a separate table for business class fares for airlines that have business class agreements. All the ZED stuff is usually governed by airlines via the ZED MIBA forum.
ID90 generally stands for industry discount where an ID90 is a 90% discount off a specific fare. ID75 would be a 75% discount. ID fares are much less common.
Some airlines just do a flat rate for OAL standbys. Spirit and Allegiant ring a bell where a NRSA from another airline can purchase standby travel for $25+ tax regardless of mileage.
Just to expand, historically the industry used ID90's because things, ie fares, were much more regulated. (It's 90% off the full coach fare). In the 90's and post deregulation, it became obvious that some airlines were gaming the system stating in one personal example the full coach fare was $6000 (ID 90 being $600) but you could buy a ticket in coach on Expedia for about $450 on the exact same flight.
The ZED system was born and adopted by most major carriers around the world that want to participate and slowly the ID90 system is a thing of the past!