Originally Posted by
gemac
What I was chiming in on was a discussion of missing your scheduled flight and standing by on a later flight. There is no guarantee that I would be the only one standing by on that later flight. Probably not, and I could end up stranding someone else.
I understand your revenue argument. But just to be fair it can also work against the carrier in situations where it would have been more profitable to get rid of some pax by clearing them on to earlier flights, thus opening up more last minute (i.e. high fare) seats to sell on the later flights or use to accommodate disserviced pax that misconnected earlier (as opposed to issuing meal vouchers and hotel rooms and depleting inventory that could have been sold if space had been freed up by letting others fly in empty seats that otherwise would not be used earlier).
With standby you are taking your chances. With a flexible fare you have more of a guarantee.
Also, how could you "strand" another pax by flying standby? For example, at UA the Boarding Priority (BP) level assigned to you on the standby list is based on a variety of factors. There are different BP levels for a disserviced customer versus a customer who is just trying to go early. Similarly, customers with confirmed reservations that are awaiting seat assignments have a much higher BP on the standby list than either of the prevoius examples. Each BP level is further sorted by status, fare paid and time added to the list, but even a General Member with a confirmed reservation without a seat assignment (BP1) will always be cleared before a disserviced customer (BP5A) or a customer trying to go early (BP5C).
AA has a similar system, right? So how could a standby pax "strand" anyone other than a NRSA employee or another revenue pax who also felt like trying standby to go early?