UNITED959

It seems that officially, standby is not allowed...but like a lot of things with airlines, rules are bent depending on who you encounter.

I missed my first flight due to construction traffic at ORD.

kappa

It was NBD. My scheduled flight departed only 90 minutes later. Sure, they allow standby for misconnects, if on the same PNR. But it doesn't make sense to me that it's an AA instigated one-way/one airport policy. There is ample evidence that it is permitted outbound and from other airports inbound.

However it is just one more of the many reasons I avoid connections through LHR. Thankfully I have needed to made only one since a trip two weeks after 9/11. Can't do much about UK O&D, except use the BOS-MAN service when not headed for LON.

JGR01

Since it appears you know all the details of UA rules and operations .. and fly them a lot .. I am shocked you did not realize there was construction traffic at ORD that would affect your getting specifically to an AA flight.

Had you been on a UA flight I am fairly certain you would not have been delayed by the ORD (repeat whole ORD airport not just AA-ORD) construction traffic.

Did you use the top-tier TSA lines (or First Class lines) at ORD T3?

Did you use the alternative G Security and the Delta Security by the L gates to avoid any lines at the main AA security area?

I think your lack of knowledge or familarity with the AA portion of ORD really caused your problem.

Those of us who fly AA a lot would have simply gone to the Admirals Club to be rebooked ... as I am sure you would have gone to the RCC had you been flying UA.

Being upper tier on one carrier and then flying another carrier as no-status really hits home! And SHOULD show that the grass is not always greener elsewhere. Me, there are many factors of UA's workings that I think are a BIG DOWNSIDE in comparison to AA.

YMMV.

UNITED959

Appreciate your public lambasting of my tardiness. I assume you've never missed a flight.

FWIW, I'm Platinum on AA -- so it's not like I avoid AA entirely.

What I'm hoping to get out of this thread is finding out others' views of an AA policy that I view as being rather rigid and customer unfriendly.

georgehf

Well UA is in Terminal One which is closer to the highway than Terminal Three. Maybe he would have made it... although if he drove, Terminal One is the last stop on the tram from the parking lot. Hmm

jamespvg

I was under the impression that UA did not allow international standby as a matter of course, but there was a policy to allow those who had missed flights (by a short period of time) to be reaccomodated on a space-available basis. Certainly a sensible policy, but hardly tantamount to 'UA allowing international standby'.

I would be happy to be corrected(o), but if I am right, would you care to address the more substantive point?

UNITED959

They had a lane closure at the entrance of ORD (pothole repair work on a Saturday morning, from what I could tell). And I was driven by a friend to the airport.

UNITED959

UA will allow standby on just about anything. You can be a regular Joe flying ORD-LAS. If you get to ORD early, and there's a spot on an earlier ORD-LAS...it's yours. (You can swap LAS with MEX, LHR, HKG, etc.)

When flying SIN-ORD/SNA, I almost always connect in NRT...and book the later NRT-ORD or NRT-SFO (depending to which home I'm headed). If NRT-SIN arrives on time, and I'm feeling up to another 8 hours of flying right away, I'll walk up to the gate and see if there's availability.

If I want an extra 1.5 hours on the ground, I'll go have a bowl of noodles.

jamespvg

Woah, hold up. Domestic standby isn't the issue here; we know UA allows it, just like AA does.

Are you, however, saying that official UA policy is to allow all standby on international routings?

UNITED959

That's exactly what I'm saying.

jamespvg

Then I stand corrected.

Still, I maintain my original hypothesis that the competitive market is such on international routes that AA can get away with not offering free standby (although they have bent the rules for me in the past at LHR, so I'm relatively content with this official policy-airport staff favours status quo...)

sinoflyer

It's UA's general policy to permit same day standby U.S., Canada, and Mexico (and Central America too?) flights. I don't know about transoceanic flights (I've never tried it), but I know it is certainly not permitted if you are ticketed for a different day.

I know UA has a more liberal standby policy over most airlines--like Southwest, but I am surprised that AA gave UNITED959 such grieve for missing the PVR flight. Is Canada considered international too, and therefore precluded from standby?

UNITED959

Right. Different day standby (unless irreg ops are involved) is a whole other animal. But same day standby...can be done on any UA flight, whether it's ORD-HKG or LAX-SFO.

brp

Well, the last time I missed a flight (through fault of my own, and not a late connection) was 1986...and that was on hourly BOS-NYC shuttle service, so it didn't matter at all back then. Many, many flights since then. It is possible to not miss flights if one prepares.

Cheers.

pinniped

First of all, are we sure this is an actual AA policy? I flew AA two weeks ago - both directions, out of the U.S. and back into the U.S., I got onto flights as a standby.

Coming back, I even got a reroute - I was standing by for YYZ-DFW because my YYZ-ORD flight was delayed just enough to likely cause a misconnect for me. The minute I cleared on YYZ-DFW, the gate agent confirmed me on the appropriate DFW-MCI flight. (That was the one caveat - they probably would not have allowed the standby if DFW-MCI hadn't been wide open.)

I have also gone standby on ORD-LHR, both directions, in the past. (Post-9/11, but probably about 3-4 years ago.)

Granted, I do the vast majority of these trips with no checked bags - that certainly makes things easier.

I suspect that UNITED959 may have encountered a surly agent, not actual AA policy.