Ok I just printed my boarding passes from united.bomb a few minutes ago, only to find that in my drowsiness when booking the tix, I didn't notice the wonderful part about them being Ted flights. So now I have Ted on two of three segments tomorrow (the first two of MSY-DEN-PHX-TUS). I did a little research, and found 13 different possible routings that completely dodge the Ted bullet, but I couldn't find info on how to standby for these flights, whether they are full or not, or whether I was even able to standby for them or if that would break the rules. A friendly call to United India yielded no help on standby, as it seemed the agent was only interested in refaring and selling me new tix plus $100 change fee. So my question to you more seasoned UA FF's would be, do I just need to show up to the airport a bit before the first segment I actually want leaves tomorrow, do I need to call someone, or am I SOL? I should point out that each of the 13 possible routings takes me through different cxn airports.

I suspect you'll have little, if any, luck standing by through a different connection city. United's view is that you might very well get stranded with no outbound flight, and they don't like to take that chance.

Since you're obviously not upgraded or interested in one, what's wrong with Ted?

First, I was interested in upgrading the flights as I just got 4 e-upgrades dropped into my account. I got them after booking and I planned on trying to use them when I checked in online today, which was what really clued me into the whole part of it being Ted even before printing the bp's: "upgrade not available."

Second, every Ted flight I've taken has been a bit, well, noisy and disorganized due to a lot of families flying. I was hoping to get some work done on the plane tomorrow, but my experience doing work on Ted flights in the past has been pretty bad...hard to concentrate. Maybe I'll get lucky and it won't be like that tomorrow since it's not a weekend flight and it's not a holiday weekend upcoming.

That much has to be true, since PHX is all Ted, all the time.

Since you hadn't planned to upgrade these flights, or else you would have noticed the Ted-ness earlier, I have to say I'm confused. Aside from first class and a different safety video, there is no difference between Ted and mainline flights. So why are you so desperate to avoid Ted?

If you just hate PHX for some reason, it MIGHT be possible to standby for a different routing if you get a nice agent. But the agent will be prompted to confirm you all the way through, since standing by for, say ORD-XYZ is technically impossible when your ticket shows PHX-XYZ. And confirming you on a different routing is against the rules, unless there is complete chaos on one of your flights. So you need a really nice agent.

Your ultimate destination is TUS.

All routes to TUS are:

TUS-PHX, mainline. But, PHX is all TED, except the daily PHX-IAD

TUS-SFO, regional jet

TUS-LAX, regional jet

TUS-DEN, regional jet

Personally, I'd take the TED rather than the UX regional jet. What's so bad with TED? Unless you're on a first class ticket, TED is no different from mainline.

Same snacks, same BOB, same seats. The only difference is that TED doesn't give you the whole can of soda.

Hey, I want my can of soda man!!

Seriously though, the main reason I didn't want Ted is just because Ted flights I've taken in the past have had *very* disorganized boarding and rather noisy flights, mainly because of the high family:adult traveler ratio. Also, I wanted to upgrade, but maybe I shouldn't have waited until check-in to do this.

In any case, thanks all for your responses. I know better for next time now.

Take a couple of AA flights in Y, then TED will seem like a travelers dream.

Wow! I don't think that I've ever seen a thread in which people were given the chance yet were so uninclined to rag on Ted! Granted, I'm still very much a FT newbie and haven't seen too many threads, so...

I feel your pain, traumamed. I've got two 500-mile certs that are about to expire at the end of October. I'd much rather use them than have them turn into 1,000 RDMs (sure, better than nothing, but ...). I've got two trips coming up next month: r/t LAX-LAS and r/t LAX-MSY. I tried finding some itineraries that would allow me to upgrade between LAX and MSY, but they were just too expensive and the timing too inconvenient (I want as many full nights down in the French Quarter (and elsewhere) as possible!). So, unlike traumamed, I did know ahead of time that I was getting flights I couldn't upgrade, but it would have been nice had I been able to finagle it somehow.

I just moved down here for grad school...count on me to be loyal to UA when TUS-based and fly all those UX spoke flights, only to move out of TUS mere weeks before UA mainline made its triumphant return there. Rant over.

I pulled up the master schedule for UA/UX flights into and out of MSY, and yeah, anyone coming in or out of here is either stuck on Ted or UX. I prefer UX to Ted personally, but a lot of people don't like the RJ's. More to the point iapetus, it seems the way to get around the Ted cancer is to fly via ORD. The ORD-MSY and MSY-ORD flights are all UX. Alternatively you could also fly via CLT or SAT, but if I'm not mistaken those are US codeshares, which is just about as bad as Ted. Man, when did I get so picky?

PS - French Quarter is great, but be careful, this city is ridiculously crime-ridden right now. Three of my classmates have already had "incidents," all while coming back from the Quarter.

Not sure how many families you are expecting since a) most kids have already started school and b) you're flying on a Thursday. Wear headphones to reduce the noise factor if that's the reason you are trying to find other routing.

I'm always astounded that anyone ever gets any serious schoolwork done in New Orleans, Louisiana ... even in grad school!

Yeah, and that's what I initially thought I was going to do. However, I've only got ~48 hours (48 hours and 20 minutes, if my flight arrives at MSY on time) in New Orleans and I decided that the diversion through ORD would take up too much of that weekend. And, IIRC, it wouldn't have gotten me there until Saturday morning. That's basically the compromise I made in flying with our boy, Ted. I don't regret that decision, despite the inability to upgrade beyond E+.

Thanks for the heads up! I've been to New Orleans many times before and am no stranger to the city. I've got friends and family who live there. Even better, the family members are NOPD. Still, it pays to be vigilant there and I know it.

Besides, if history serves as a guide, my friends and I are more likely to spend more time uptown and in the Marigny than the Quarter itself.

Ted > RJs