The 12 hour rule wouldn't be a problem because you were within 12 hours of the new flight. The interesting part is that you would not be within 24 hours of your original departure, which is also part of the criteria.

And if you are gold/platinum you get it for $25 instead of $50.

I guess the 32 hours to my original flight was the confusing part. The agent was reading the rule, and neither one of us thought it would work. But when I asked her to reprice my discount ticket, the system spit out the $25 fee all-in.

I guess this is pretty good evidence that you do not have to be within the 24-hour window when making the request, just that the flight you are looking to change to must be within 24 hours. That is actually a nice additional value to the benefit, though I'd still rather free standby.

Hello,

I was looking at Same Day Standby at the airport as an option to move up to more time preferred flights, but the new policy answers some, but leaves other questions unanswered. Anyone who knows the answers who can help, is appreciated.

Some of the facts:

-Ticketed in March 2008 for travel (before any of the new policies were announced)
-'Saver' Reward domestic ticket (meaning G inventory)
-Paper ticket (meaning it has to be done at the airport regardless I believe)

Of course, I will be using pda.continental.com to ensure my requests for standby have any sort of chance.

If I want to standby at the airport for an earlier flight, will I be able to do so for no-fee because of the ticket date purchase? The online website rules do not state that there is no-fee to standby due to ticket purchase date unlike the new baggage policies which are much clearer in that language area.

According to other threads research, there does not seem to be any restriction in standing by on award tickets on departure as long as I don't change routing (which I don't plan to, just trying to get to my destination earlier) and there is availability.

My main concern is if I can standby at the airport for no charge to due to older ticket purchase date. All of this pre-confirm stuff has no applicability due the paper ticket part, but I have a fairly decent concern that they will try to charge a fee at the airport regardless of ticket purchase date unless it is clearly in writing somewhere.

Thanks,
Rasheed

Id say theres too much going on and the Reps will be confused by it all and simply want to get rid of you, and will simply tell you you must pay the fee. If you do pay it just contact We Dont Care and they most likely will refund you the fee.

Now keep in mind that there was an old SBY fee if you wanted a confirmed SBY, if you were willing to try your luck at the Gate then there wasnt any fee. So if you want the Rep to confirm you on a flight then you will have to pay $25 per person, thats the old system, and that was same day with the same class of service being available too.

I don't think date-of-ticketing makes a difference with the new same-day policy. I think it went into effect globally for everyone on June 17th.

However, my very recent experience with changing reward tickets as a Plat is that as long as reward inventory is available and it's the same routing, e-tickets can be changed to any alternate date with no fees whatsoever. There may be fees or other restrictions on this for non-Elite travelers. The same-day stand-by rules do not apply; they just re-ticket you. I've done this on both outbounds and on returns with rewards, changing to completely different days/times provided that 'Saver' inventory is available - and probably they'd do it for the additional miles if only 'EasyPass' was available. I recently changed HNL -> JFK to the next day's HNL -> LGA (change was made the morning of the original flight), though I had to go through the Internet Help Desk; for some reason, the regular Elite call center couldn't ticket the flights that I could see doing a search on co.com.

I have no idea how it might work with paper tickets, however - that could be the showstopper in this case, unless your new flights are far enough out that new paper tickets can be issued via a call to the service center. I'm guessing that the airport ticket agents will not be able to help with changing anything on a reward ticket, eletronic or paper.

This is not correct.
Of course they can just completely re-issue an award ticket, and it is free for a platinum, but that has nothing to do with what the question was.
Airport agents dealing with paper tickets are - in my experience - generally incompetent. That being said, they generally figure out how to call in to their help desk and process the request.

For rasheed the main issue will be whether a GA understands what they are doing enough to let it happen. Technically he should be able to stand by for the earlier flight for free, even on a reward ticket, but actually getting that to happen is a whole different story.

I am not sure if I mentioned it on this very thread but I was offered a flight that was 19 hours before my original flight and in this process I managed to screw myself up because I didnt notice it was for the wrong day (that is I wanted it 'same day' and without noticing I was being offered flights for the 'day before')

Also, I was charged 25 dollars being a silver.

Was this by an agent or a kiosk? It was likely an error

I just flew CO today...would have like to have gone on the earlier flight and then thought about this new 'enhancement' .....it will have to be very special circumstances before they pry $50 from my hands for this

Unless the ticket was purchased prior to the policy change, in which case the fee would have been $25. It seems to me that Continental is allowing the more flexible change terms for earlier ppurchased tickets (12/24 hours rule) but charging based on the earlier policy. That is based on nothing other than conjecture from the various stories that have bee related here.

That is what I figure...I just wish the standby rules for older tickets was in writing..obviously, these older tickets will eventually disappear.

Rasheed

It was done during the online checkin but I think sbm12 is on the right track, it was probably because the ticket was bought before the change in the fee

Hi everyone, I don't know if this is covered earlier. I used my CO miles to ticket a FC DL flight from MSY to LAX. I think I want to get on a CO flight earlier in the day. Do you think I can same-day confirm for 25 bucks (i'm gold elite for CO) or even same-day standby for the earlier flight?

I called CO today and they said that I will need to shell out more miles! Is this true?
Thanks!

you may have used your CO miles but technically you are on a DL tkt, as far as I know theres no SBY, except maybe on DL

As I feared, this fee has beome a toll booth in the effort to arrive home on-time.

Yesterday Mrs. Mudder and I were transiting EWR on our way from SXM to PIT. We were booked on the later flight to PIT, 3240 scheduled to depart at 8:05pm and arriving at 9:57. There is an earlier flight, 3238, that is scheduled to depart at 6:00pm. Our arriving flight, 860, was scheduled for 5:36pm, so I had to book the later flight as the earlier would have been too tight a connection, especially with customs.

Of course, flights were backed up at EWR last night, so when 3238 was delayed until 7pm and 3240 was already showing a 40 minute delay, I went to the PC to get on the standby list. The agent, while helpful, was unable to get us on the list as the flight was already under "gate control", and when she attempted to call the gate no one answered. We returned to the gate, and when the agent appeared, he said "you have to go to the service center, and it's $50" I replied "Since this flight and my later flight are delayed, isn't this irregular ops?" "No", he replied. I then asked why he wouldn't take the fee at the gate. He curtly said "You have to go to the service center, and pay the $50 there"

I hustled back the the PC, where the PC agent obviously had the problem of trying to collect the fee while being unable to confirm our seats because the gate had control. After a few phone calls to the gate and help desk, she managed to charge us the $75 for the two of us (Mrs. Mudder is not elite). The agent said there were 3 seats available, which I confirmed on the pda site, but she told me I had to go back to the gate for BPs. I returned to the gate and handed the GA my receipts, and he told me there was only one seat available. I checked the pda site and saw that we were not on the standby list, yet somehow CO had managed to take our $75.

Luckily, after boarding there were still 2 seats available and the GA put us on the flight. We arrived at the gate in PIT around 9:25, 30 minutes before our originally scheduled time. Flight 3240 arrived at the gate at 10:57, one hour late.

As far as I'm concerned, CO can have all the revenue it wants from people who change their mind and want to leave earlier in the day. Good for them. But given that EWR is obviously a problem airport where they overschedule flights, this fee ultimately puts me in a situation where I try to be nimble to get home some time around when CO originally has me scheduled, and CO now wants to charge me for that.

(as an aside, I'm assuming this was just a one off GA who wouldn't take my credit card, I'm hoping sending people to the service center isn't new policy)