SDC/SDS is useless
 

Flying SANPHXDFWSTL tomorrow. Attempted to do SDC for the DFWSTL segment for an earlier flight since I had a long sit in DFW after arriving in PHX. Was told SDC wasn’t being offered and if I wanted the earlier flight they would have to reprice the entire itinerary which was $429. Pass. Tried to do same day standby since it was being offered on the app; in doing so it meant that not only would I be put on the standby for the DFWSTL flight, but my confirmed segments for SANPHXDFW would then become standby as well because they had no way to only do a standby request for only the one segment.

So I cannot for the life of me understand what benefit same day confirmed provides if it’s only occasionally offered. I think the whole same number of connections, same routing, etc provides very little benefit at least when compared to what UA offers with this option. And how does it even make sense that the every flight segment on a trip has to be standby just to be able to be listed for standby on one flight segment? Basically risk missing your entire trip just to take an earlier flight that one would potentially not even make let alone the originally booked segment?!?!

Sorry you find it useless. Many people have had success with with it and find it beneficial. You can always go standby.

It used to be useful. then they nerfed it and it's this sad, fairly useless version of it's former self.

Who were you talking to? You can most certainly standby for one segment without it affecting the rest of your journey. Either you misunderstood or had an incompetent agent. I find PHX has the most poorly trained staff of all the hubs so I'm going to guess it is the latter.

My right honorable friend is dead on (as usual). It was once very good. Now ...... not so much .....

Safe Travels

I'm maybe 1 for 7 on doing this (outside of IROPS) in the past year. There have been times that I've done 2 or even 3 SDCs to produce the desired result that only changes one leg of the itinerary from what I had originally booked, because of the requirement to change all the legs.

Just to clarify, when you stand-by on an earlier flight until your place is confirmed and the stand-by is cleared on that earlier flight, you don't lose your confirmed seat in your original one. So the last sentence of the OP's post is technically incorrect.

I lived in Arizona for 20 years and found the agents at PHX to be some of the best in the system. Even after being away for several years, I still know many of them by name, and they'll go out of their way to help me when needed.

To the OP--are you certain there is space on the flight you want out of DFW? If you look at other threads, there were issues at the tower in the area (that serves both DFW and DAL) which caused problems on Wednesday. Thursday the area was hit with weather, which caused further disruptions. It wouldn't surprise me if there simply aren't flights with availability.

But how can you be standby on your first two segments? In that sense you would lose the confirmed seats.

You should request the standby for the earlier DFW-STL flight just after you arrive at DFW, presumably at the gate podium at your arrival gate.
That would not produce any issues. However, if you would like to stand-by right now, at SAN or at PHX, you would need to stand-by for any SAN-STL or PHX-STL combination, and to keep your original seats on the same flight, you must request stand-by on an itinerary where all the flights are different flights than those you have confirmed seats.

So at checkin, the agent said she was able to put me on the standby list for the earlier flight, but that required her to tag my bag for the earlier flight. So potentially my bag will make it earlier than I will.

I’m not exactly sure what she did that the other agents couldn’t, but I suppose it’s a limitation of Sabre, to be able to just add a standby segment to the itinerary, but the fact that you would have to standby on each segment of an entire itinerary is I’m sorry absurd and every agent seems to have a different answer. On UA it’s simple; if there are open seats in the same class of service and within 24hrs, then they will confirm you and even to that point you can go from a SANIAHSTL to a SANORDSTL or even a SANSFOORDSTL without any issues because the origin and destination are still the same.

It's when someone tries to tack on extra segment or two that increases mileage (and EQSs) that they nerfed it so bad unfortunately. Qualifying metrics based on distance (EQMs) gives that incentive unfortunately

By the way, on AA you could also go from SANPHXDFWSTL to SANDFWSTL or SANPHXSTL but you can't do it online. Technically, the policy is against this but when you nicely ask an AA agent at the airport, they would generally help you.

I was able to do this several times pre-COVID but only as stand-by.

That's easily fixable. SDFC will retain ORC, the same way as upgrades don't add to your EQM.

That's the better solution than making the program useless. I used to SDFC to different hubs when there was weather coming or potential for IRROPs.

Nothing tops PHL.