Originally Posted by
iahphx
They are indeed enforcing the rule. It sounds like you are an airline employee or have some sort of "buddy pass" as a friend of an employee. Not sure how these rules would work for you.
It does seem like there would be plenty of standby space available for travel during the Olympics. CO says the Olympics aren't good for their Beijing business, and last I looked there were award seats available for some flights.
If you can solve your visa dilemna, it wouldn't be a bad time to drop in on Beijing. Getting a hotel room should be no big problem, but you may have to do some detective work (kayak's a good place to start) to find reasonable value. My guess is that event tickets will also be available at a price a Westerner will find OK, so long as you skip certain sports like swimming and diving.
Good guess on the "buddy pass" front. You are correct about that. It's fun to show up at the airport not knowing if you're going to PEK, EZE, FCO, or somewhere else.
As for getting to/from PEK during the Olympics, there is lots of business class space IAD-PEK but the flights PEK-IAD during the Olympics are often oversold by 100 since there are lots of people who will no-show. But still there's lots of business class space. However, if the embassy is enforcing the plane ticket rule, I might be out of luck since I will have no ticket. Maybe a print-out of from UA's internal site showing I'm listed on the flights will work. If not, I hear AMS is nice in August.