I don’t understand how someone gets put on standby. Is there some sort of standby ticket? If so, how.. and do people really go through all the hassle of going to an airport while having a possibility of going home?
In: 80
My father has been a pilot for American Airlines since the early ’90s, and I’ve flown standby a lot.
I think the easiest way to explain it is by thinking of it like gambling, and it works in two directions. Airlines are gambling that a certain amount of people are going to be willing to pay a certain amount for a seat on a plane to commute from A to B. At the same time, they’re also allowed to sell tickets based on the number of expected no-shows. People who fly standby, rather than buying tickets, pay to be put into an ordered (and ranked) queue that allows them to fly for a lower price if they’re willing to take whatever seats remain of the difference.
So, essentially, you have four situations:
– The airline sells more tickets for a flight than there are seats. These flights are called “oversold” and the airline then has to basically buy people off of the plane (kind of like an auction).
– The airline sells the correct number of tickets, and everyone who bought a ticket gets a seat. These are “full” flights.
– The airline sells fewer tickets than seats or there are no-shows who open up seats. The airline then lets people who paid to be in the standby queue on the plane.
– The airline doesn’t sell enough tickets or have enough standby passengers to justify the cost of the flight, so the flight is cancelled.
But, people on standby lists roll over to subsequent flights from A to B, and I think they also get priority over people on standby lists for just those subsequent flights.
There’s some added complication with how staff can board the plane, since pilots can “dead-head” in the cockpit and on jumpseats, for example. But, that’s basically how it works.
Fun fact: According to my dad, there’s only one US airline that doesn’t oversell tickets — JetBlue.
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