gncohen

I’m booked on AF26 (CDG-IAD) on Monday, following a 4.5 hour layover. If I can make it to the gate for AF54 before it closes, can I take this earlier flight instead if any seats remain? If it makes any difference, I’ll only have hand luggage and am platinum. Thanks in advance

mlin32

Non, unless maybe if you have a fully flex ticket.

Fabo.sk

Potentially, AF might prefer to open a seat on the later flight for in case of IRROPS. But don't count on it.

olivedel

LOL I have never seen that happening recently on a European carrier.
Standby is not standard practice in Europe unless you were overbooked on a earlier flight or you are on a non-rev ticket.

gncohen

Thanks. The earlier flight was completely full in all cabins, so no possibility at all.

maalloc

Coming a bit late to the party but in the future, don’t hesitate to ask at the airport’s transfer desk.

Your chances are quite slim if you have to be on standby; but otherwise it’s worth a shot. I do ask all the time when I have long layovers or when I arrive early at the airport and AF has always been very keen to find an empty seat, even without a flex ticket.

They do seem to be happy to release seats on future flights in general; and it must be especially true at a time when cabins often fly full.

theKrafty1tar

I once flew LAX-CDG-WAW in La Premiere with a 10 hour layover in Paris (booked on purpose as I needed to meet a colleague in the city that day). Upon landing the AF PA immediately offered to put me on the CDG-WAW flight leaving in 40 minutes so that I wouldn’t have to wait so long for my connection. Of course I politely declined and explained my situation, but it shows that LP passengers might have some flexibility.

Billyfergus

Used to do this quite a lot coming back from Kazakhstan at Schiphol. You could not book the earlier connecting flight to Aberdeen as connection was too tight but if the Kaz flight arrived early, always used to ask if could go on the earlier flight and 9 times out of 10 they let us. Obviously without hold luggage and standard economy ticket.

Three weeks ago on a route to Edinburgh from Valencia via CDG, we had the last flight of the day back to EDI booked. However, we arrived in CDG and noted the earlier EDI had a delayed departure and went to lounge and asked AF lady there if there was any possibility of getting on the earlier EDI flight - she told us to take a seat and 5 minutes she came to us with two new boarding passes. Obviously once again we had no hold luggage and our tickets were not flexible ones. We are both platinum so I guess this helped.