Prior to this idiotic fee being enacted, I would often book the longer layover with the full intention of going standby on the earlier connecting flight if time allowed. That greatly decreased my chances of a misconnect. It saved me more times than I can remember.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it--passengers going standby in a would-be empty seat on an earlier flight and freeing up a later seat for potential sale are doing the airline a favor and should not have to pay for it. The only people who "suffer" from free standbys is non-revs traveling space available, since the revenue standby pax would trump them on the DM list. (I think that's a major factor in why the employees like this inane fee so much.)

I hope that in the merger process, they at least exempt 1Ps from the fee like CO does. IMO the standby fee and the close-in-award-booking fee (since rescinded) are the worst MP benefit losses I have suffered. Getting rid of this fee would motivate me to try to retain 1P next year.