Thread: How good is ZED Light when it comes to swapping airlines?

Okay, since I've apparently asked a very interesting question here, which got several conflicting answers and raised another few questions from others as well as myself, I've actually bothered to check with both MY airline (SN) as well as with LH's staff travel office and this is what they had to say on ZED:


1- you ALWAYS have to buy tickets for a flight on a ZED participating carrier at your own airline.


2- most ZED carriers require ZM, so this is the standard ZED fare, but occasionally some require ZH whereas the 'really good friends' (like LH+SN+LX or DL+AF for instance) are satisfied with merely a ZL from each others employees.


3- ZED tickets are valid on ALL participating ZED carriers, but only those which have an agreement with the airline issuing the ticket MUST honour it, the others MAY, but don't have to (provided the fare class and the zone is correct, obviously)


4- ZH will obviously always be honoured even by airlines requiring just ZM or ZL, but ZL will only be accepted by those airlines which have an agreement with your airline for this Low class in place, the others likely won't, but again, they may decide to do so. When traveling on a route which is operated by several airlines, some of which (but not all) accepting a ZL from your airline, you either have to buy 2 tickets (a ZL and a ZM) and get the unused ticket refunded, OR you can just use the ZM ticket, knowing you'll be paying too much in case you get on the ZL carrier's flight.


5- You can NOT pay up the difference to 'upgrade' from ZL to ZM or ZH, as this is ticket related and is thus the responsability of your own airline.


6- You can NOT pay up the difference to 'extend' your zone, as this is ticket related and needs to be done by your own airline.


7- you CAN pay taxes though, since a ZED ticket NEEDNT have the taxes included,
and this is where it get's interesting: you can ask for a ZED ticket to be issued WITHOUT specific destination and thus only pay for the milage zone. At the airport, you pay the exact taxes depending the destination you fly to. Alternatively and most commonly, you will have a destination mentioned on your ticket however, in which case taxes for that destination will be included, but you're still entitled to switch destination, so in case the taxes don't match, you can be asked to pay the difference, although most airlines won't bother.


8- since ZED isn't route specific, you can swith hubs (interesting for instance on LH, since it allowes switching from MUC to FRA and vice versa, which is BTW, latin for 'the other way round' as somebody had asked me) on condition switching hub doesn't cause a shift in milage zones on either of the stretches.


Now, the above matches how I understood it to be, and is also in line with how I've used ZED tickets before (notably on the fact i've already switched destinations), but it doesn't seem to match with all that was said by Mr767er, so maybe that's just his airline not wanting to bother with it and thus imposing stricter rules for its own employees, although they should still follow the above general rules for OAL employees if they are a ZED airline.

That's it in a nutshell. Looking forward to any imput from you all.