I have a rather quick question (with a long background story) about standing by for a flight. I couldn't figure out which forum this question would go in and figured I'd post here since I'll be flying CO for the flight in question (Moderators feel free to move post if in wrong forum). Okay here goes:

The 2nd weekend of April I have plans to fly from Southern California to Lexington area and found the cheapest flights to be from Continental. At the time, the cheapest fares I found (that coincided with my schedule) were 2 one-way fares:

Departure: 6:00AM ONT - 4:17PM CVG (120ish)
Return: 6:00AM LEX - 10:30AM ONT ($130ish)

A couple days after, I recheck the fares and a previously expensive fare (for departure) prices out to the same price as my current departure but flying straight into Lexington and stops over in JFK for extra miles (around 1k) :

Departure: 12:55AM ONT - 5:15PM LEX (Prev. $250ish now $120ish)

I find the fare too late after the 24hr cancellation policy and now missed out on it. So my question is if there is any way I would be able to stand by for this flight even if it has different segments/destination airport/fare price and how I would go about doing it.

Thanks in advance for any responses!

Wirelessly posted (Samsung Omnia: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320))

As far as I know, the origin and destination need to be the same. The routing can change though. They will most likely charge you a change fee and any difference in fare to make the airport change you want. You can hope for some bad weather or some type of delay and ask to be re-routed.

If you are flying via JFK that is on Delta, not on CO, so you'd be subject to their standby rules, not CO's.

What is the change fee on ticket you have? If the new tix is just $120, then it could cost more to change it than to flush it, and just purchase the better routing.

Yea the change fee is $150 and is more than just buying the new one-way fare.

All flights are through CO.

Ah I see.. that makes sense. Yeah the change fee wouldn't be worth it at all.

Thanks everybody for your responses

CO does not serve JFK. It may be a CO flight number on a DL flight. If that it the case you are still subject to DL rules for standby since they are the one actually carrying you.

Ah my mistake, I'm double checking it now. It is:

ONT-IAH-EWR-LEX