Travel Benefits
 

Do any/many of you use your travel bennies, i.e., vacations or trips on days off with spouse or whomever, or is it more trouble than it's worth?

of course people use them. I've never had a problem. it really isn't that much of a hassel, unless you're traveling with a family of 4.
you have access to see the loads on flights, just check them and pick your best option.

We do both domestic and international, and it usually works fine because we avoid doing peak season or peak travel days. For some reason we never have much trouble getting there, but occassionaly my SO has to buy a return ticket. She's pretty busy so it's worth it for her not to spend an unplanned extra day non-reving.

If you plan your travels based on realistic loads and leave yourself an extra day to return, you should be fine.

I have always worked at regionals that had multiple major codeshares, which provided extra non-rev flexibility, ie you could just list when necessary without having to get a stack of ZED/ID90 in advance.

Can someone briefly explain what "ZED/ID90's" are? I'm brand new to the airline industry (just git hired last week).

It's basically a code to describe the level discount available to employees.

Check with your airline's employee ticketing office to see what fares are available to you - not all airlines offer the same deals.

Thanks for the info.

ZED and ID90 are how you non-rev on airlines other than the one(s) you work for. On your own airline, (and their major partner(s) ) you can list yourself using a web page or phone number, it's basically an e-ticket for standby travel. You can do this on the fly, at the last second while you are walking up to the gate.

To non-rev on most other airlines (depending on agreements with your airline), you buy a voucher for a reduced fare standby ticket. The disadvantage is you need some advance notice for the destinations and airline(s) you want to use, and you have a lower standby prior than on your own airline (and affiliated airlines).

ID90: Basically you pay 10% of the full-fare walk-up price. ID95 would be 5% of the regular fare.
ZED: You pay a fare based on the mileage between city-pairs (this is new and is replacing ID90.

Ok, now I get it. Makes sense. Thanks!

Did you get hired by SkyWest?

However, the ZED is based no Zones, Zonal Employee Discount. I can't remember the zones, but something like 0-599 miles, 600-2000 miles, 2001-4000 miles, ect. They don't add up the mileage in your journey, just look at the distance and see which mileage "zone" it falls into.

LAX to AKL, $215 on a ZED round trip on QA. ID90 was about $550.

No, TSA. My multi-time is <100, so I'm pretty limited.

Ok flog me. What's non-rev and since you can't just jumpseat anywhere you want to go on a trip?

Pilots have three travel options if they are working for most 121 carriers.

1) Pay full price like everybody else.
2) Jumpseat (IE hitch a ride in an open seat on airlines that have reciprocal agreements)
3) non-rev.

Non rev (Non-revenue travel) is a space available seat on the aircraft for the employee and their travel dependants. Depending on the company, the non-rev benefits can vary greatly.

For example, when I worked for ACA/United Express, we had free travel for us and dependents on our flights, and free travel on all other United flights (UAL and UEX). Then things changed a bit and we had free travel on our flights (regardless of the codeshare), and had to pay a minimal fee for any other United branded flights ($15 per leg on any other Express Carrier, and a set fee plus .02 cents a mile on UAL or something to that effect.)

Free travel is something that I miss greatly now that I'm out of the airlines... My wife used to "commute" each week from IAD-BOS for graduate school, and I figure that my non-rev and jumpseat travels were worth over $150,000 in free travel over my 5 year airline career (I kept boarding stubs and I had over 450 flights during that period, including international first/business class trips for free).

Yeah, that's what's keeping in the regionals vice corporate. We use thousands of dollars worth each month.

It definitely hurts not being able to say "hey- lets go to ____ this weekend for dinner or just to get away".

But the truth is that once you get used to living a "normal" life again, it's not that big a deal. One thing I do know though... now that I don't deal with security and employee parking shuttles on a daily basis, I have no desire to travel by airline very much any more. When I do, it's nice to have the money to buy a ticket and know that I'm going to be able to go without having to worry about a full flight or overbooking.

Even knowing the system and how to work around it and having insiders knowledge... after being able to park in my reserved parking space and walk out to the plane (50 years away), any time that I have to go over to the airline terminal, I cringe.

If your carrier, code share carrier, or any other carrier that you can JS on(US airlines) doesn't serve where you want to go, guess what? THERE IS NO JUMPSEATING ON OTHER COUNTRIES AIRLINES BY US PILOTS.

Yeah, maybe you heard a story of so and so getting a ride on whatever airline, but whatever.

More than likely, your airline has an agreement with XYZ airlines, ID90 or ZED.

No US airlines serve AKL. Atlas goes there but is no allowed to to take a JS'er. So you either get a ZED or ID90 on Qantas or Air NewZealand, in my case.

Don't worry, if riding on a ZED or ID90 you wont look like such a dork showing up with your backpack.

So if I were to work at EXJ and wanted to go to say Colorado for the weekend could I hop on or since it isn't business related would I have to go non-rev?

You can use whatever you want. If your airline charges a fee to non-rev (most do), just JS, it's free. With the exception of AirTran if you are not first. If it's off airline, like you work for XJET but are taking UAL, you have to JS.

If the flight fills up, no seats in the back, you would have to JS.

You can always JS for personal reasons, it's not a big deal. However, there is a whole slew of JS etiquette that could chew up an entire freaking thread.

not entirely true, we just got an agreement with a european airline for jumpseating privelages.

OK, I stand corrected. And who would that be by chance?

All I was saying is that some new guy shouldn't think that he can show up to ANY foreign carrier in another country and expect to be able to JS aound the globe. Although I heard that Iberia or Spanair had an "extra crew" type thing for US pilots, it was far from the norm. If you were going out of MAD it was a matter of ACTUALLY getting to the CA to talk to him about it. Problem is, the gate agent has no idea what you are talkng about and may or may not be helpful in letting you go talk to the CA or going down him/self to do it.

Trans States Travel Benefits?
 

Since we're in the subject.... Does anyone have details on flight benefits at TSA?