Canada / Same-day confirmed/standby
 

Hello,

Has anyone tried to standby for a same day flight on a transborder Canada-US flight?

Information on this page gives different rules whether it is confirmed or standby. Basically, confirmed is available for Canada and excludes international flights. Standby also excludes international flights, but Canada is not specifically included as being an option. Sounds a bit confusing.

https://www.delta.com/us/en/change-cancel/same-day-flight-change

same day confirmed:
"You can use the Same-Day Confirmed option for travel within the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands on Delta and Delta Connection® flights. It is not available for international flights."

same day standby
"You can use the Same-Day Standby option for travel within the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands on Delta and Delta Connection flights. It is not available for international flights"

Thanks

So the two airports I fly into the most you clear immigrations for the us in Canada and therefore they won’t let you standby, but if you can be confirmed prior to going thru us immigrations in Canada you can change. Others might know more but this has been my experience

Canada they exclude mainly because of bags. Unlike domestic, bags must fly with passenger on international. Adding to this, coming back you clear customs in Canada. Under US CBP rules you technically not in US till touchdown. (They can cancel preclearance anytime) Also an employee must deal with clearing your bags if they get seperated from you. Not necessarily huge inconvenience but its one more manual step.

Domestoc standby works great since bags can be voluntarily separated.

This is another example of DL defining "international" differently for different purposes.

I'm living proof of this. Int'l flight delayed 45 minutes when they accidentally no-show'ed me, had to manually unf-k the whole situation, remove bags, replace bags...

So in summary - no same-day confirmed for CAN.

I have easily been able to standby northbound into Canada (no checked luggage) but not southbound into USA. Confirmed is available in both directions.

This is what I would logically expect, given preClearance procedures.

I've done same day change (not standby before) from YYZ before going to the US, both on the app and at the counter. This was done pre-pandemic. Nowadays, I just get an error trying to check-in or change a flight and have to go to the airport instead to check-in.

I ended up with no bags for three days when DL messed my bags up do to this. They asked for volunteers. I offered, they rebooked me right away (they knew they were well over and the next gate had flight departing before the one I was supposed to take). Gave me new BP and thought nothing of it. In air I checked on bags and saw they had been offloaded from original flight. It was then I learned they had to reclear my bags with CBP even though had already done that.

I should clarify my statement above - when I had a medical emergency (2018), Delta changed my flight at no cost - next one out of YUL - but that wasn't same day confirmed... and I had no bags.

For me, it "only" took ~30 minutes planeside.
But that was in the USA, not Canada (as discussed here, CBP pre-clears in Canada, but USA can "rescind" it if something isn't 100% correct - I once saw a guy pulled aside at a USA Jetway on arrival from Canada).

Here is my useless data point: last week I was returning to the US from YYC on a DL-marketed WS-operated itinerary. DL OLCI offered to SDC me onto some other WS flights for a cool $345.

There shouldn't be a fee or fare difference for SDC. This sounds like an ordinary change.

I would have thought so, too, but it was presented in the OLCI interface that in my experience on domestic flights only offers SDC/SDS, not ordinary changes.

WS operated flights shouldn't qualify for SDC anyway. (Well at least going onto them, they used to allow SDC from WS to DL. I'm not sure if was unstated policy or what.)

Also when SDC if on a main cabin fare,, it'll sometimes offer SDC by upfaring to the lowest available fare class. (When yours isn't available)