Originally Posted by
physioprof
Am I recalling correctly that in late 80s early 90s there was something called "torquing", where you could just show up at any airline counter in the airport with a ticket on a different airline and if space was available standby on the same route same day they'd take the ticket and put you on their plane?
Think it was mostly earlier than that, but yes. They would sometimes true up the exchange of passengers by weighing stacks of tickets instead of counting.