Originally Posted by
rdurlabhji
I've had a different experience with this.. I was put on an earlier flight, confirmed, by my request (ABI-DFW) because they saw that storms were rolling in and could affect the later flight, at no charge. I think its a YMMV with the agent you get.
The reason some agents may not be willing to do it is that if one person gets the earlier flight and then tells his friend, who tells their friend, and so on and so forth, the next thing you know the agent has 150 people clamoring for 10 seats. Sure, they could technically put the 140 extra people on standby for the earlier flight, but there would be little sense in doing so.