Originally Posted by
FlyingNone
Since inception of this fee I've seen waitlists down to maybe a dozen people or less. So United might have the right idea from the perspective of "crowd control" at the gates and getting flights out on time, not to mention (again) more revenue.
I was at ORD last night and watched a couple 767s (one domestic config, one intl config) to SFO and I was struck by just how empty the standby lists were. Both flights were under 15 people on the list, and mostly (if not all) nonrev or buddy pass travel. These were flights that a year ago would have probably had standby lists of 60ish people, or more. GAs seemed much less slammed with people asking "Have you started clearing standby yet?" especially as the standbys were mostly experienced standby fliers.