Originally Posted by
pinniped
If this does indeed work regularly then it is a significant difference from legacy carrier operations. ^
I'm pretty sure I could not show up at a United gate holding a full-fare ticket for tomorrow and standby today. Either the flight is Y1 and the agent exchanges my ticket (perhaps leaving me standing there waiting for a seat assignment...heck, I'd have a right to VDB at that point!
or it's Y0 and I'm completely out of luck.
How would a full-fare "tomorrow" passenger be prioritized vs. a displaced (from another WN flight) "today" passenger? If my WN flight is canceled, throwing me onto the standby list for the last flight of the day, can I effectively "buy up" my standby priority with a new or changed ticket?
I guess we will have to wait for Steve M to weigh in on his results with buying a full-fare day+1 ticket and flying standby for day+0. I'd imagine that this would produce pretty entertaining results at a ticketing counter given that the agent would have just stated that there is no possible way to buy a standby seat.
I'm pretty sure that I was added to the bottom of the standby list when I purchased my Southwest ticket at the ticketing counter. It seems to me that there were no frills or tricks to hopping up to the top of the standby list on WN.