lvs2fly

Standby Policy for all nonrefundable type fares is changing to SAME DAY CONFIRMED option. Effective January 1, 2003

Effective January 1, 2003, Delta will no longer offer the option to standby for an alternate flight within the 50 U.S, Canada, US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Under the new policy, customers traveling on most restricted fares will have the option to confirm travel for a different flight on the same day of their originally ticketed flight for a fee of $100.00

Customers may request to be confirmed on a different flight, on the same day, no more than three (3) hours before a requested flight's departure time by paying the fee.

Seats must be available in the original booking class cabin.

No changes are permitted to the origin, destination, or stopover points.

bdschobel

How about the so-called "flat-tire" rule? Supposedly, most airlines will allow free standby travel up to 2 hours after the scheduled departure time of the ticketed flight, to allow for circumstances beyond the passenger's control. They should allow for 2 hours early, too!

Bruce

dlnewbie

The "flat-tire" clause is one thing but why should the airline give you free pre-original reservation travel ... To reward you for driving 90 miles to the airport. I dislike the new rules as much as the other guy.. but the airlines have to watch out for the bottom line too. I don't think its unreasonable for them to implement the $100 fee for earlier travel.


[This message has been edited by dlnewbie (edited 10-10-2002).]

NoStressHere

Not to defend the airlines, but... if you miss the flight and they could have sold the seat you AGREED to use and pay for, who pays the airline for the lost revenue?

By the way, isn't this the same rule that has been floating around here on various threads for a few weeks? Or is this something different?


[This message has been edited by NoStressHere (edited 10-10-2002).]

goldmedallionflyer

I think they're called "the passenger(s) who shelled out $100 to stand-by"

GMF

lvs2fly

Yes, this is different. Delta has eliminated standby all together.

MRW

Most restricted fares? For economy, does this mean anything but Y or just the inSULT fares?

keithguy

This is an interesting way to disguise not allowing standby. It also seems odd that you must change it 3 hours prior to departure.

But most importantly, I could not find a press release from Delta regarding this. It's not on delta.com either. What is the source of this?

Seems kind of fishy to me...

lvs2fly

I am a Delta employee and we just received a bulletin about this.

indufan

Now I am seriously confused. The old policy has been abandoned before it was ever enacted?

$100 to confirm, fine. But no more than 3 hours? You can confirm for $100 (assuming the same class of service is available) to move a flight up days in advance. Don't tell me this is another issue that no one at Delta can be on the same page with. After the recent new rules, I emailed DL and they told me that I could never confirm a earlier flight on the return without buying a Y fare. Since then, I have talked to several others at DL and none of them had that same intrepretation. I assume this hasn't been publically released since I find no mention of it on delta.com. I would have never paid the $100 to standby anyway but DL is going to continue to lose a lot more because if only the Y bucket is left no one is going to pay $100 plus the fare difference.

And here we go again, empty seats go flying across the country. Let's not rehash that issue.

EnhancedByCO

In the land of confusing bulletins, I read this as meaning that you could not switch your flight until three hours before the desired departure time.

Although this is obviously not as good as being able to standby for free, this seems to alleviate a lot of concerns that people were having about this policy--particularly the fact that one would be paying $100 merely for a chance to get on the flight. At least with this policy, once you pay the fee you will have a confirmed reservation in your hand for the new flight (or, conversely, find out that there is no space on the flight).

Of course, this is not perfect; after all, there may end up being empty seats on the earlier flight, but it was listed as sold out on the CRS. In this case, the ability to stand by would mean that you could get one of those empty seats, in contrast to the new policy where you won't be able to get on the earlier flight.

Also in the land of confusing bulletins, I read "seats must be available in the original booking class cabin" to mean that coach passengers must stay in coach, but not that an L class seat has to be available for someone with an L class ticket--as long as there is one Y seat left, they can get it. It seems that the three hour rule is there to protect the full-fare Y bucket from being used up by "standby" pax until the last moment.

[This message has been edited by EnhancedByCO (edited 10-10-2002).]

rcs85551

Correct. The original booking class does *not* have to be avaiable, only seats in the Y compartment (meaning the flight is not overbooked).

So, if you want to get on an earlier flight, you can either go ahead and standby if you want a flight several hours earlier, or confirm yourself if the flight you want if within 3 hours *and* has seats avaiable.

Robert Leach

If this is true, it seems to me that there are a lot of problems with it from the perspective of the airline.

First, it creates a situation where you'll have people willing to pay the $100, yet the CRS will show the flight as full, so they won't be able to sell the $100 confirmed standby seat. If confirmed passengers then don't show up for the flight, it goes out with empty seats.

Or, conversely, it means that since you can't pay the $100 and confirm unless a seat is available in inventory, you'll have to wait at the gate until the 10 minute mark to see if, when they cancel out the no-shows, a seat becomes available in inventory, at which time chaos will ensue as they try to collect the $100 to confirm everyone that wants on the flight. And after that, they've still got to deal with non-rev standbys. That's compressing a lot of activity into the last 10-20 minutes before a flight, which will result in delays.

A similar problem results when they clear Medallions for first class upgrades. At that point, those passengers' Y seats are vacated and return to inventory, which means that then the airline can sell more confirmed standby seats for $100 each, putting a crush on the gate agents to collect this money and get those people on the plane -- all during the last 10 minutes before flight departure. And you know they'll want to capture these $100 fees, so they'll do it. And how will they prioritize those in the gate area waiting to see if any Y inventory becomes available so that they can purchase the $100 confirmed standby? I can just see two seats becoming available and ten people rushing the podium with $100 in hand. I guess they'll have to create a standby list for the confirmed standby list to make this orderly.

My thinking as to the reason behind this new policy is that somebody finally figured out that it was going to irk people to pay a nonrefundable $100 standby fee if they didn't clear the standby list. Ergo, they decided to confirm the standby when the $100 exchanges hands so that nobody paying the $100 fails to clear.

And, thinking this through more, if inventory does not have to be available in the specific class in which you were originally booked, but instead only has to be available in the cabin in which you were booked (i.e., you were booked in L, but all that's available is Y, so you pay the $100 and take one of the Y seats), does that mean that upon paying the $100 and taking one of the Y seats, you can then use a Medallion upgrade certificate (i.e., have you transitioned from a non-upgradeable to an upgradeable fare when you pay $100 and take the Y seat)?

Can't you just see that? You buy a U fare, then you spy a flight two hours earlier that's sold out in U, L, and T; you call, pay the $100 and claim one of the Y/B/M/H/Q/K seats, then turn around and upgrade it. In effect, you've upgraded on a U fare for an extra $100. Not a bad deal if we're talking a transcontinental flight where the U fare was $198 roundtrip.

Just a lot of things that could happen with this developing policy . . .



[This message has been edited by Robert Leach (edited 10-10-2002).]

RSSrsvp

Do you really believe they will permit this?

sowalsky

I don't think so. There are nearly NO restrictions on a K-class ticket for travel between AUS and DFW for in/out on a Saturday. I know; I've looked for the TX-OU game. The ticket is refundable with no change fees, yet it is only K-class for about $200.