United's seniority machine

Reading the codes

United's codes are a grammar rather than a list, which makes them easy once you see the pattern. PS means positive space, SA means space available. The number is boarding order, lowest first. The trailing letter is the pass type: V for vacation, P for personal, R for retiree, F for extended-family buddy, U for unaccompanied regular buddy, Z for other-airline ZED.

Where we stop short
The complete published priority chart dates to 2013. The top of the ladder is independently corroborated by current union material, so the codes you will actually use are reliable; the deep tail is not. Note also that revenue standby customers sit second overall, above every employee category except officers.

How ties actually break: and why early check-in does not save you

United's stated order is: boarding priority, then board date with the oldest first, then check-in time. Check-in time is a third-level tiebreaker that only matters between two riders with identical priority and identical board date. It is not a race.

United's own worked example makes the point better than any explanation: an SA0V rider with twenty years who checked in six hours before departure beats an SA0V rider with ten years who checked in eighteen hours before departure. Checking in twelve hours earlier lost.

For active employees, board date is your date of hire and it is fixed. For retirees it is recomputed every trip as travel date minus years of service. Retirees do not lose seniority, but because SA2R sits below SA1P, a forty-year retiree still boards behind a six-month employee travelling on a personal pass.

Seniority is switched off only for other-airline and non-employee categories, because United holds no service date for those people. That is almost certainly where the folklore about United being check-in-time ordered comes from.

The one-hour lock, and other operational details

Once you are checked in you cannot change your boarding priority or pass type within one hour domestic, two hours international. Switching between a vacation and a personal pass means creating a new listing and cancelling the original, so decide before you check in, not after you see the standby list.

Standby Process Automation clears standbys without gate-agent discretion, in two runs per flight: 60 and 30 minutes out domestically, 75 and 60 internationally.

Seat preferences must be selected per flight. They do not carry over.

United's app shows your exact standby position, the loads and the upgrade list in real time: unusually good visibility compared with its peers.

Since 31 July 2025, pass riders and dependents must use the United mobile app; the old pass-rider access website is gone. employeeRES still exists for employees and retirees themselves.

When you do not clear

You roll automatically to the next flight the same day, but the rollover depends on the gate agent remembering to do it before closing the flight. Ask. Do not assume.

You keep your priority and board date, because those are attributes of your profile rather than of the listing.

There is no next-day rollover. After the last flight of the day you must cancel and rebook.

If your party splits, unaccompanied riders drop a tier: SA0V becomes SA3V, SA1P becomes SA4P.

The exception worth memorising: a spouse or domestic partner travelling unaccompanied keeps your priority rather than dropping. Children, parents and enrolled friends all drop.

Enrolled friends, buddies and the trap in the calendar

Enrollment runs once a year for employees, in November and December. The 2026 cycle closed on 19 December 2025. Retirees enroll twice a year (December for the first half, June for the second).

The trap: once a travel period begins, an enrolled friend can be removed but cannot be replaced within that same period. United's own suggested workaround is to deliberately leave a slot empty on 1 January so you have somewhere to put someone later in the year.

Retirees have no buddy passes at all. They get two enrolled friends instead.

Vacation passes: eight one-way ePasses deposited on 1 January, valid five years, service charge waived in all cabins, and one pass covers an entire accompanied party for a one-way trip. An IRS constraint applies: taxable riders such as domestic partners and enrolled friends may only use passes distributed in the current year, never carried-forward ones.

Who gets taxed

Not taxed: you, your spouse, your parents and your dependent children. Taxed: domestic partners, enrolled friends, extended-family buddies and regular buddy riders.

The reason parents ride tax-free is a statutory carve-out unique to airline passes: the tax code treats any use of air transportation by an employee's parent as use by the employee.

The most under-appreciated item: for early-out participants who will not grow into retiree status, their own travel is taxable, as is their parents' and children's. That is a complete inversion of the normal treatment and it catches people badly.

It is also why the benefit must remain space-available. Reserved seating would mean the airline gives up potential revenue, which collapses the no-additional-cost exclusion that makes the whole thing tax-free in the first place.

Where we stop short
One more thing worth stating plainly, because it is the fastest way to lose the benefit and the job: riders may reimburse you for taxes, fees and imputed income only. United has fired employees in groups for selling passes.

ZED and companion passes are different products

ZED eligibility: you, your spouse or domestic partner, dependent children and parents (yes). Buddy pass riders (no). Enrolled friends (no, with one narrow carve-out: enrolled friends are ZED-eligible on Hawaiian and Alaska provided you accompany them on every leg).

Companion passes are a separate product from buddy passes and people conflate them constantly. Eight per year, priced at the high ZED rate, the companion can be anyone, and you must accompany them on every segment. You receive them regardless of your buddy pass situation.

Terminology that helps: myIDTravel is a booking platform, ZED is the multilateral agreement behind it, and the specific fares, cabins and rider rules are set by bilateral agreements between each pair of airlines. That is why partner rules vary so much.