What is B6's Standby Policy?

Say I'm booked on a 2 p.m. flight but want to get to airport early in hopes of getting on 1 p.m. to same destination. What is the policy?

Here's a link from the B6 website that explains it all - whatever situation you might be in : Standby Travel

Two years ago standby was free, and because B6 does not overbook your standby chances were excellent. I saved over $100 once by booking the red-eye and flying in the morning instead.

JetBlue wised up and closed this loophole at least partially. Good for them. The current policy still allows you to book the cheapest flight of the day and fly when you want for $25 more, although you'll certainly get a middle seat.

Standby is still free for the flight immediately preceding your booked flight, but for $25, the peace of mind of a confirmed seat before driving out to the airport is sometimes nice.

So I can only standby for the flight thats earilier than my original departure??
I am flying LGB to OAK on sat afternoon (4pm flight) but there are flights available at 8, 11 and 1pm. I would like to take the eariliest flight to OAK so I can have bit more time there and I notice the flight still quite empty. Is it possible for me to standby for free without paying any penality?? please advice!!!!!!!

No, you can only standby for the flight prior -- although you could do the $25 confirmed change for an even-earlier same-day flight (as somedude says). You also must call in to be placed on the standby list, and last time I did that I got dinged with a $5 fee.

Same Day Standby has gone up to $40 now.

The other day I was on a DL flight ATL to LGA, not knowing how long it would take me to get there I wound up at ATL 2:45 before my flight. As I was checking in my bag I saw that there was a flight leaving in 50 minutes. I asked if I could get on it. They took the boarding pass I printed at the hotel, gave me a new one for the earlier flight and off I went. Nice and easy. Now, had JB had the same flight I would have either had to wait or pay. Although, I should have had to pay on DL with no fuss or request by me they didn't charge. And yes if they flew to ATL they would have been in the running.

Once again, IMHO it is the difference between a legacy carrier and the new players.

Now, before everybody bashes me. I do fly and like JB. I will be taking them to LV the end of July and again in November and that is just what I know so far.

Service in the air is top notch. On the ground, is fair at best where a lot of other carriers look the other way for slightly overweight luggage, flight changes, late arrivals to the airport and other issues. I have found JB to be lacking.


-Dave

Same day CONFIRMED change to the same airport is $40. Standby for one flight earlier/later to the same airport is free.

funny observation from the other night in Boston.

I checked before heading to Logan to see if there were seats on the flight, and there were.

The line was extra long at the counter so I asked one of the employees if I can go on standby at the gate, and they advised "sure!"

So I breezed through security, went up to the gate and was told that there were too many people on standby already ahead of me, and no seats were available.


Oh well... unfortunately my flight boarded on time but immediately the captain announced that we will be pushing back an hour and fifteen minutes late because of the weather in NY.... kinda made me wish I made that standby flight.


--Russ

Always, always, always ask to be put on the list anyways. As I always fly sandby I've always asked t be put on the list even afer being told there was no way I would get on, and so far i'm 10/10 this year getting onboard. This wasn't with JetBlue but another carrier but I've always told people to ask to be put on the list just in case. Our BOS agents are usually right on with their assesments so you may not have stood a chance, but ya never know!

Another thing to note on Jetblue's standby policy...while it is true that you can fly standy on the flight prior for free, it does NOT necessarily mean you will get the same nonstop flight and city pairs.

For example, I recently had a nonstop LGB to JFK flight. I wanted to get on the earlier nonstop flight, but was told that the flight directly before mine actually was considered to be LGB to AUS to JFK, which actually got me into JFK AFTER my original flight would have been. The only difference was that it took off from LGB (with a layover) before my original nonstop flight.

Needless to say I wasn't very happy about this policy, and the customer service agent wouldn't budge. Has anyone else had this happen to them? It seemed like a silly policy to me, so I wasn't sure if this was actually true.

How does one check the seat availabilty on B6 flights? I want to try strandby on Sunday (JFK-IAD), but the prior flight is over 6 hours earlier. Don't want to go if there's no chance of making it.

maybe there's a more clever way of doing it, but a simple solution can be trying to book (price check) 6, 7 or 8 seats for that flight and see what the system tells you.

JetBlue doesn't oversell so if you get a rate for your party of 8, chances are there's at least 8 seats available, I dunno thats what I did.

--Russ

PS. you could actually go further than that, you could choose seats just before submitting payment so you can clearly see all the seats available... once thats done, do not proceed with the booking.

www.seatcounter.com should do it for you.