Apologies for jacking your thread, but I was going to post my own and this is very similar.

An alternative specifically for letting players bring a friend along, assuming that making a trade-able pass is not feasible for some reason, or not desirable since it would become another commodity that players could buy and trade for massive amounts of CE/CR instead of using the CE market could be a sort of "buddy pass."

Basically either a different purchasable pass, or an option when buying an additional elevator pass (instead of extending your current one.)
The idea here is that it's a pass that covers one tabbed player's elevators, instead of your own.

This way you could bring friend who does not have elevator passes, or energy even, with you instead of having to find new people to play with, or ones with passes if your friends can't get an elevator pass for some reason.

I have friends that I'd love to potentially be able to buy an elevator pass for, but I can't. Tabbing them only goes so far, as well.
Being able to tab someone without using energy for a cost could be potentially a simpler way to deal with trade-able passes.

Only problem I see, is players hiring themselves out for free elevators... if that's an important factor to adding something like that to the game. As it is, having an elevator pass makes players able to hire themselves out as bodyguards for missions at almost no cost to themselves, so it's not really that different... :(
Perhaps this could be solved by having the pass equipped to your account, but bound to a specific friend, once you tab them, so you can't use it with anyone and everyone. There'd still be no trading of the pass between players but you could still buy a pass for someone else that way.

Doesn't matter if a F2P or a P2P player uses the pass, the pass has been paid for by SOMEONE so therefore OOO has got their profit before the pass is even traded :|

Think, please, think.