They have their place. UA gives us "extended family" buddy passes - draws from the same pool of buddy passes, but with a slightly cheaper fare and priority above the non-family buddies (but still below everyone else). I used that for my father-in-law to come visit. Like I said, he doesn't really have what I would normally consider the "heart of a nonrev" but the flights were good enough and we were conservative enough that it worked out pretty well. He drove out to MSN so he could get a nonstop to DEN, and got in just fine - almost had a seat in F, even. Going home, he could have made it out the next day as he would have liked, but if he didn't get on that, all flights for the next couple days were booked pretty full due to a football game that weekend (which he had tickets to). We sent him out a day early to be safe. He seemed to like the process overall though, and I think he'd do it again.