Thats an awful analogy and whichever DL employee explained it that was, clearly was struggling in finding a way to justify this absurd policy. What's flawed about that analogy is that a flight is a flight. Whether you leave at 6am or 10pm, you're still getting the same product. The only difference is the time you recieve it. With that analogy, we are talking about two different types of sweaters which could have clearly had different costs in production, leading to two different retail prices (because if there wasnt a difference in production costs, Macy's would clearly let you exchange the one type of sweater for the other as they theoretically would have the same retail price).

If Delta had a 100% on time performance (or compensated me each time they were late in departing), then I could understand their standby policy (or lack thereof). However - seeing as they have a hard time sticking to their own schedule, I hardly see why they feel their flights need to be protected from standby's wanting to fly early. As many others have explained, freeing up inventory later in the day only helps their own bottom line by being able to possible sell those seats later or having more seats for irops. They lose no revenue as people willing to standby 98% of the time would probably have never purchased an earlier seat (because honestly - if you have to leave at a certain time, you are going to purchase that flight...and half the time, the earlier flights are often cheaper anyway that the flight purchased).