American Airlines and Standby ...

[pms4104]

Effective Feb 22, with some few exceptions, American will no longer permit most passengers to standy for an earlier or later same-day flight. The object is to steer people to paying $50 to guarantee a seat, if available, on a different same-day flight.

 

Full info here: http://www.aa.com/viewPromotionDetails.do?fN=standby-Policy.xml&_locale=en_US

[FlyerTalker]

Mirroring the policies at several other airlines. So it's not that AA is the first into this area.

[YXU AC*SE]

Yes, AC has had it for some time; for fees up to 75$ to 150$ per fare class booked. They recently have begun waiving it for Rapidair® (their YYZ>YOW/YUL service) for everything except their lowest fare class -- so there is some faint hope that AA might eventually re-visit their decision.

 

The loophole they are trying to shut down are (primarily business) pax who have purchased the lowest fare of the day and then standby for the flight they intend to take. AC found by being inflexible in the triangle, their pax migrated to PD, WS and Via.

 

Scott.

[kenish]

Reminds me of a surreal experience on America West years ago. I was flying ELP-PHX-SNA and the ELP flight arrived into PHX quite early. I had a long connect time but the earlier flight to SNA had not started boarding. I went over to the gate and the agent gave all sorts of reasons why I couldn't take the earlier flight, even for a fee. I lurked around the gate and only 15-20 people boarded the A320. So, I asked one last time and got a "Not only no, but hell no" response.

 

After waiting for my original flight (last one of the evening), guess what....it was overbooked and they were providing hundreds of dollars in vouchers and a hotel room to "vols". I hate to see any company go into BK but when America West filed a second time it was well-earned IMHO.