The most common place I've seen the time restriction was when "Netsaver"-type fares first rolled out. For a while, they were VERY cheap fares but they sometimes had strict after-7PM Friday provisions in them. So you couldn't buy the fare, bust loose from work at noon, and get on the 2PM flight.

These days, those Tuesday emails I get from every airline never have any great deals in them, so I don't know if they are as picky about the time restrictions. The airlines abandoned the truly GREAT weekend getaway fares a year or two ago.

Anyone ever do this on Meridiana?

is this a hotel or an airline? http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/wink.gif

Kidz, I'm guessing from your other posts that you're traveling LAX-JFK on AA, that you found a cheap flight for earlier in the day on Saturday, but you really want to take one of the LAX-JFK redeye flights on Saturday night, with your fallback being that you would fly Sunday morning.

There is risk involved, but if you're up for it, book the cheaper flight. On the day before the flight, use aa.com to check in (you can do this up to 30 hours in advance) and print out your boarding pass (you'll need this to get through security at LAX). On the day of your flight, call aa, tell them that you're going to miss your flight, and have them cancel the reservation for you so you don't lose the full value of your ticket by being a no-show. Then, go to the airport at the time you want to fly, use the boarding pass you printed to get through security, and go right to the gate of the flight you want to take. Tell the gate agents there that you missed your flight and want to travel standby. If you can't get on the 10pm flight, then head right over to the 11pm flight to get on that standby list. If you don't make either, ask if you can fly standby on one of the Sunday morning flights.

The risks are that you won't get out Saturday night, and that at a certain point AA will tell you that you have to purchase a new ticket to get back to JFK, in which case you could apply the value of your old ticket, less a $100 change fee, but might end up paying a lot more.

[This message has been edited by Blumie (edited Feb 10, 2004).]

It may follow, as well, that the reason the later flight is more expensive is that more inventory has been sold from it (thus reducing your chances of being seated on the later flight).

As far as downline reservations cancelling, I always thought that this happened after midnight on the day of the first missed segment, not immediately after missing it, simply to allow for sameday standby.

If things are looking wide-open, an airline CSR may just confirm you on the later flight straight-away. Even if the flight is looking wide-open 24 hours earlier, all it takes is one cancelled flight to fill everything else up. Good luck!

This is an airline. One of the biggest private carriers in Italy. They are one of the handful of carriers that have flights into FLR.