20 seats is actually pretty darn close in Y. There are another 16 in F as well. Expect that to change between now and then, I'd suggest stopping by again.

1. Stopover is absolutely out of the question. ZEDs are point-to-point, so you need a ticket for every segment you go on. No question about it. However, everything I've read on here says that destination changes are allowed, as long as you're in the same zone ("downgrades" are ok, but you lose whatever you overpaid on the ticket). MIA and FLL are a little further, but TPA might be worth considering as well. Not sure if that exists from SFO nonstop, though. Unfortunately, I don't think many agents know that ZEDs are supposed to be destination-flexible like they are. I'll try to look at our reservation system's help files when I'm at work tomorrow and see if I can find any information on it - mostly so you could tell an agent to look something up and solve an issue in 30 seconds, rather than holding up a line and/or finding out after the plane has left.

2. We don't get too many OAL nonrevs, to be honest. However, I can tell you that Star Alliance employees fly at SA5, which is tied with United Express employees. All other OALs fly at SA8, meaning you're behind buddy passes. Beyond that, our tiebreakers are (I'm pretty sure) year of hire (probably not full date) and then time of checkin after that.