Last evening I was waiting in ATL in the "A" concourse for my delayed DCA flight when I heard an agent at a nearby gate make this announcement:
"This flight to Houston is a designated Payload Optimization Flight. There are empty seats. We have standbys. We are waiting word from operations headquarters on whether we will be allowed to board any standbys."
I have never heard this phrase before. Is it a blip? Or might we be hearing more of this in the future?
ATL to IAH is not very far so I don't think having enough fuel should have been a problem. In about fifteen minutes, the answer came back, "yes". They were told they could board the standbys.