I thought that for commuting purposes you were given an allowance and get to Japan how you please
You can either have a $2000 allowance OR you can have C class (Business) tickets to your home. Some people take the $2000, get ZED tickets and then keep the change. Obviously, they will have to sort themselves out if the standby tickets don't work out for some reason e.g. service cancelled and the airline fills up the aircraft our ZED commuter was planning on using. AJX doesn't have a huge number of ZED partners you can use but it seems to have sufficient options, thus far, for most people.
I always use the C class ticket and accept the fact that I don't profit from the allowance. I enjoy knowing I have a ticket on the date that I want to fly and don't need to stress about loads and whether or not I'll get on. One great feature is you get to keep the loyalty points of your airline, which can be useful later on when you want to get some 'free' tickets.
You are able to change on a monthly basis and some guys do. When the loads are low and they can basically guarantee they'll get on, some pilots will take the ZED option and, when the loads start to get worse e.g. Oz Summer, they will take the C class option.
As I said previously, it is still the best commuting contract around but I'm waiting to see how they piss us off with their penny pinching ideas. At the moment they are talking about only having 6 return ZED tickets on ANA per year. I mean, what the hell are they thinking
They actaully make some profit for the Company when they'd travel with otherwise empty seats and they're talking about restricting the privileges of being able to use standby tickets. See what I mean about them being complete muppets in their all out war to be seen to be doing something to save money; even if it does piss people off and achieve the square root of bugger all
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