Originally Posted by
ISTFlyer
You should request the standby for the earlier DFW-STL flight just after you arrive at DFW, presumably at the gate podium at your arrival gate.
That would not produce any issues. However, if you would like to stand-by right now, at SAN or at PHX, you would need to stand-by for any SAN-STL or PHX-STL combination, and to keep your original seats on the same flight, you must request stand-by on an itinerary where all the flights are different flights than those you have confirmed seats.
So at checkin, the agent said she was able to put me on the standby list for the earlier flight, but that required her to tag my bag for the earlier flight. So potentially my bag will make it earlier than I will.
I’m not exactly sure what she did that the other agents couldn’t, but I suppose it’s a limitation of Sabre, to be able to just add a standby segment to the itinerary, but the fact that you would have to standby on each segment of an entire itinerary is I’m sorry absurd and every agent seems to have a different answer. On UA it’s simple; if there are open seats in the same class of service and within 24hrs, then they will confirm you and even to that point you can go from a SANIAHSTL to a SANORDSTL or even a SANSFOORDSTL without any issues because the origin and destination are still the same.