Originally Posted by
rustykettel
That might not work at smaller stations where the counter agents handle gate or ramp duties. On my one late show (in my defense, I only got a hour or two of sleep due to helping my wife with her overseas travel emergency in the middle of the night), there was no one at the counter but the phone agent quickly moved me onto the next flight. This was at EUG which isn't that small. Or wasn't.
A more customer friendly policy (besides leaving it as is) would be to cancel tickets if the customer fails to contact AS within 24 hours after the departure time (scheduled or actual, whichever is later). There's really no difference in being able to sell a ticket or avoiding the process of offloading a pax if they call in five to ten minutes prior to departure or shortly afterwards.
I agree that your policy really would be the customer friendly one. I was just speculating that even if AS didn't want to go that far they probably are other policies that are somewhere between now and what they will have 10/1 that would both meet their needs and keep legitimate customer problems in mind. But really the important point you make is that there is no difference to them between the customer who shows up at departure -10 or +10. In either case, if there is a standby then they have cleared them and if not the seat goes empty. And in either case the SDC policy would cost them the same. So I really don't see why they are taking such a draconian posture on this.