Here's my situation: My wife and I have relatively cheap tickets for this Friday @ 7:30pm. She just found out that she is getting off work at noon instead of 5pm, so I was hoping to take an earlier flight that day and not get into CA late Friday night. Is this going to cost me a boatload of cash?
Sorry for such a noob question, but over the last few years I've only flow on full fare tickets (for work), and when I've changed flights it's been free, but now I am not sure if it was free for everyone or just because I was on the max-price ticket.
CLG
Originally Posted by
pitflyer
Check the wiki for a lot more details about standby, too. One of the few things where Southwest is different than a lot of the other majors is no free standby for EARLIER flights, but there has been plenty of times an agent will put you on the flight anyway -- but they don't have to for free.
Since the roll out of their new CS2 software (where the standby list is now maintained electronically), it has been my experience that if you want to standby EARLIER on a discounted fare, they will run your credit card (but not process the up charge) at the time they add you to the standby list. The charge to your credit card is only processed if/when they clear you on the standby list and actually give you a boarding pass for the earlier flight. By getting your credit card/payment info when they add you to the standby list, it saves them valuable time when they are actually processing standbys and want to get the flight off the gate without taking a delay.
The above has been my observation on 2-3 occasions; one of the WN participants on this board can confirm whether or not this is now SOP.