Flying Standby
 

Just saw this article titled "4 ways to win frequent flier rewards" by Peter Greenberg on MSNBC.com

"Here’s my advice for redeeming your miles for the flights you want.
1. When redeeming miles for a flight certificate or for a flight ticket itself, always demand a paper ticket. Every airline will try to force you to take an electronic or e-ticket. Don’t do it. With a paper ticket, you have a more negotiable document. A gate or counter agent can process it at the last minute.
That paper ticket allows you to do something the airline will tell you isn’t possible — but the airline knows is possible: fly standby on a frequent-flier ticket. As long as you’re holding a paper ticket and you haven’t changed the city pairs (your originating and destination cities), or your flight numbers, you can take that paper ticket to the gate, show proper I.D., and as long as there’s a seat available at departure time, you’re going to get it. The airline reservations people will never tell you this. The frequent-flier departments will often go so far as to tell you you can’t do this.
Of course you can do this, as long as you’re flexible. Remember, a frequent-flier award is a contingent liability the airline would love to dispose of. The airline won’t do it at the cost of a paying passenger. But at departure time, at the gate, an empty seat has your name on it if you have that frequent-flier ticket. Just bring your bags to the gate. And unless it’s the day before Christmas, Easter, spring break, Thanksgiving or a few upcoming three-day weekends, you stand an excellent chance of getting on that flight, or the one immediately after it."

My question is, the conditions Peter puts on getting on the flight is 1. paper tickets
2.the city pairs have to be the same 3.not have changed the flight numbers.
I understand the first two, but I assume that the flight numbers for the flight you want would be different from your original ticket.

Has anyone done this? Any commment about flying standby would be appreciated.

I think instead of 'flight numbers' he means 'flight date'.

As far as flying standby goes, I've read that for some extremely restricte tickets (ones bought from priceline, for example), you can't fly standby. However, for just about everything else (my experience being with Delta), it's not a problem.
I flew from PHL to HNL in October on FF tickets on Delta, and when trying to change to get a better flight, they were the ones who told me about standby as being an option. Also, during my 12 segment segment-run on DL in December, we had no problems flying standby, and all of the flights were with electronic tickets. The agent just wanted to know what flight we were originally booked on, so he could see if the standby flight was valid, and update the records.

Jeff

Thanks, Jwhite4 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif
Just flew from Las Vegas to Lansing MI on Jan. 2 and was first in line for a bump. The NW flight was 28 people overbooked and not only did I not get a bump, but 6 people waiting for standby got on. Just goes to show you never know.
Wish I were back in Las Vegas, the sun doesn't seem to work very well in Michigan.

For Priceline tickets, you're not supposed to be allowed to standby. But, it appears that if you go wander up to the gate of an earlier flight using the same routing, the agent will often put you on the flight.