I flew HNL-LIH-HNL last week (on award tickets) and was able to get on earlier flights both times with no standby fees. In fact, at LIH the front desk agent volunteered to put us on the earlier flight without us even asking. Both flights were 100% full as well.

Dr. D, were you flying HA or AQ? My most recent experience (last week) was also successful (flew on the earlier HA flight, but most luggage arrived on the later flight).

Can anybody else comment about AQ allowing or disallowing free stand-by now?

I travel @ least twice per month between HNL-KOA on AQ. The last two times, arrived @ airport early enough to catch the flight before ticketed flight. Both times, was told even though the flight has seats, you have to pay the fee. I was not the only @ the gate trying to fly earlier. BTW, I am an Executive Club member, and @ least one of the others was Ali'i club.

I booked an AQ inter-island Awards flight with my UA miles from KOA to HNL and was told when I checked in that I was not able to take the earlier flight by the check-in agent. The computer would not let her.

However, I was able to fly on the earlier flight by waiting till everyone loaded and walking up to the boarding agent and asking if I could board the flight. She said sure, so I went ahead and boarded. Note however that my boarding pass still showed me on the later flight, but I guess since all the seating is OPEN nobody would really know which flight I took.

Any experience on trying to fly a day ahead instead of just earlier the same day.

I have had a change in plans and can no longer depart when I needed to depart. Changing the ticket via american would cost $100 + 100 change fee.

What other options do I have?

vandesa, you won't be able to fly standby a day ahead, but if you got more than 1 award ticket out of the same account, you're better off re-depositing your tix and reissuing the awards, as it'll cost you $100 for the first award ticket +$20 for each additional ticket that came out of the the same AAdv. account, instead of $100 per ticket change. If you decide to go the above route, make sure to claim your new awards before Feb. 4th, as the awrd will cost double on that date (10K miles instead of 5K).

Incidentally, I pretty much stopped claiming HA interisland awards from AA since they implemented this absurdly expensive date-change policy. Since then (Aug. 02), I've either used UA miles for AQ tix, or NW miles for HA tix (NW also has a date-change fee, but it's $50, not $100).

[This message has been edited by honu (edited Jan 23, 2004).]