Originally Posted by studentff
I'm on Sunday's 3 p.m. "direct" BOS-PDX (stop in SFO) and would like to take the 8 a.m. BOS-SFO instead. I might be willing to pay the $25 for a confirmed change (at 4 a.m., yikes) if after confirming the change from home I can get to online checkin and pick a decent seat; it's worth $25 to not be stuck in E- or middle for a transcon, which seems more likely if I do "regular" standby.
Also, will phone agents (probably Indian agents due to the time-of-day involved) do a confirmed change for just the BOS-SFO part, or do they have to get all the way to PDX? All of the SFO-PDX flights are showing F0 Y0 for the day, so I doubt they'd be willing to confirm a change. The BOS-SFO I want is showing F3 Y9 ... H9 so should be OK.
Yes you can! And this is a very useful trick! I needed to visit a friend in SFO for the day but the cost for putting in a full day stopover was too high. So I booked a later flight with a standard connection. Then the day of, I took a standby for an early AM flight but left my red-eye out of SFO alone. I checked availability the day before and saw the first flight out was wide open (although early), so I didnt even bother doing a confirmed. I did OLCI the night before for my original flights and walked up to the gate of the flight I wanted and they gave me a seat 45 mins out, since the plane was half full.
I was worried this might invalidate my evening flight for some reason but it didn't... HOWEVER one catch!!:
If you do OLCI and you standby successfully for another flight it will CANCEL your check in on the later flight. You need to RE-CHECK in. I didnt and when sitting at the gate for my oversold red-eye they called my name... when I came up they said "Oh! You ARE here! We were about to give your seat away...". They said they did not show me as checked in although I was holding an OLCI BP...