Standby for $$$?
 

I have a flight tomorrow at 8 pm.

I'm not working a full day tomorrow, and would like to get on the 5 pm earlier flight, should space be available.

I've done the "standby" thing before with little hassle.

Will this change now, under the new regime? Is there going to be a cost for me to do the same flight, only a few hours earlier?

Standby charges do not go into effect until January 1, 2003.

Thanks!!

That is NOT what the EWR Gate Agents told me.

They told me on 9/13 that I had to use Customer Service (Oxymoron in EWR) to go Standby since I had to pay the fee.

I told them that the ticket was purchased before that fare rule went into effect. They still insisted that I go to "Customer Service".

I did not pay a fee, but I think that was due to the fact that I had purchased the ticket in June.

CameraGuy,

I have heard the same thing about going to Customer service for a same-day standby.

I'm sure glad my last trip was on AA....all i had to do to take an earlier flight was to call AA....5 secs later they charged me $100 and I was on the flight.

Delta said their $100 standby does not go into effect until 10/1/02.

....so I can standby 9/29/02 for free.

Mitchell

I just called the elite line and was told that there is no fee if you want to standby for a flight on the same day. After Jan 1/03, this changes.

So i'm going to give it a shot, and will write back a detailed account of what did/didn't work.

What happens when the first flight of a connection is delayed causing me to miss my connection? Many times I try to get on an earlier flight because I'm connecting to one that runs only once a day. Should *I* ask them for $100?????

Sorry... off soapbox now.

We were traveling from EWR to MCO a few weeks ago on the 6:35pm flight. Our schedules cleared up so we wanted to leave on the morning flight around 11am.

I called the reservations line and the phone rep said no problem, they can make a change at the checkin counter without a fee, but if they did it over the phone it would be $100 for each pax.

We head to the airport and the ticket counter agent would not let us standby for any earlier flights without a fee. If we knew that the policy is to charge a fee, we would not have even gone to the airport early.

I talked to them for nearly 30 minutes and they would not do it for us. In the mean time, my companion tried out the kiosk right next to me and was able to change the flight without any problems. He interupted my heated discussion with the supervisor and said, with a huge smile, "Thanks for being so helpful!"

As silver elites we were also able to get upgraded to f class.

So, I got to the airport, and was given a boarding pass for the earlier flight at the P-club. No problems, except that they only had coach left. Beggars can't be choosers, so I gleefully departed and sat in 10B.

Just before closing the doors, I was called and moved up front.

so, long and short is that you CAN standby without getting hassled about a fee. Just use the P-club.

(to borrow from others on ft--"that's my $0.02 worth")