Originally Posted by
unitedwildcat
A lot of airport agents will refuse to put you on standby if you’re Basic Economy, from my experience. United used to have a page that clearly stated you could fly standby on a BE ticket but they’ve since scrubbed nearly all mention of this allowance from their site. YMMV, of course - let us know how it goes!
I’ve only had two opportunities to request an earlier flight and each was successful. I’m going to need the help of some more experienced travelers to understand what I was told!
I both cases, I was added by a United Club person who was pretty senior: more than 10 years of experience. In both cases, the system wouldn’t let them, but one agent used what she described as “the older system,” while the second agent called it “the other system.” Whatever it is I concluded that there is some sort of legacy system running in the background (DOS versus Windows?) that’s more flexible. I ended up on an earlier flight with a G rather than an N fare. I got a flight credit, but didn’t appear on the upgrade list.
So does anyone here know what the agent did and if there is something I should specifically suggest to get onto an earlier flight?