What are the odds of my friend and I getting on a flight to Japan from LAX with employee standby tickets?

Question

I have never flown standby before and I'm looking to travel to Japan for the summer. I was told I could use a mutual friend's standby tickets, but I'm not sure how it works and have a few questions. Will it be possible to get a roundtrip flight? What are the odds of there even being 2 open seats on a flight going to Japan? What happens if I wait all day and no flights become available? Any information about standby in general would be appreciated as well. Thanks.

Answer 1

I think the chances are slim because during the summer, people travel more.  Also airlines are cutting flights because the price of fuel is so high.  United grounded 6 747 aircraft and they usually use those airplanes on their Asia routes.

If you are using standby tickets, you have to have a pretty flexible schedule because right now the planes are very full.  You can get a round-trip flight but you may not get the flight time that you want and you may not be sitting by your friend.

If there are no flights available, you wait until there is an available flight.  My mom used to work for an airline and flew standby.  Even though there was an available seat, if someone at the last minute bought a ticket, then the airline can tell you to get off the airplane so the paying passenger can board.

Answer 2

These days.. about 2%

Answer 3

My dad worked for United, and I worked for a different airline that is no longer in business.  Here's the deal:

There's no such thing as a "roundtrip flight" when flying standby.  You call up, and try to get on "the list" for the flights you want.  Generally I would do this 2-3 days before the flight, but you can do it same day if you are adventurous.  If there are 10 seats empty on the flight, then the first 10 people from "the list" get to go.  The order of the list is therefore important.  First, there are different classes of standby tickets.  There are like 8 of them, but to generalize:  Airline employee travelling to a meeting or training for company business, airline employee travelling on a special standby pass, airline employee travelling on a regular standby pass, and then buddy passes.  Now, within each of these categories, it's ordered by the employee's hire date - employees who have been there longer get first priority.  Maybe some airlines do it by how early you put your name on the list, though.  So, I hate to say it, but you're pretty much last priority.

If you wait all day and no flights become available, then you are stuck.  It's happened to me before - drive to the airport, sit all day, give up, drive home.  In that particular case there was a mistake and my bag actually did make it on the flight, and I didn't get it back for 3 days.  But if you know what other flights are operating, you can get creative.  Maybe if the nonstop LAX-NRT (Tokyo) are all booked, go to KIX (Osaka).  Or depending on if your airline does this, fly from LA to one of their other int'l gateways and on to Japan from there.  Of course, you may get stuck in San Francisco, Dallas, or wherever if you try that.

Another time, I was trying to fly Indy-Houston on United.  There are no nonstops on that route, so I needed to change in Chicago or Denver.  The Indy-Chicago flights were cancelled because of a storm in Chicago, so all the people from those flights got put on the Indy-Denver flight, so I couldn't go.  I ended up buying a last-minute ticket on Southwest.  Coming home, I got on the Houston-Chicago flight, but the Chicago-Indy was full so I had to rent a car and drive it.

Generally when you call to put your name on the list, they can tell you if the flight looks full or not, but they probably can't tell you the exact number of seats available.

Keep in mind that if you get to Japan, and the flights are full coming back...that could be bad because now you have to either buy a last-minute ticket to come home, or pay for more nights in a hotel.

Try to get on the earliest flight of the day, always.  If you try for flight #2, but the earlier flight was cancelled for some reason, the passengers on that flight will take the absolute highest priority, and there will be no standby seats on that route for the rest of the day.

One last thing, and this is very important.  The airline is not making any money off of you, and in return you are expected to act in certain ways.  If not, it can get back to your friend at his/her performance review.  DO NOT tell other passengers on your flight that you are flying for free.  DO NOT unnecessarily bug the gate agents.  You can ask them a question if you need to of course, but don't be up there every 5 minutes.  And, wait until there is not a line.  If you are in line to talk to the gate agent, and another passenger gets in line behind you, let them go ahead of you.  The airline's first purpose is to serve its paying customers.  Oh, and if you need a vegetarian, low-sodium, or whatever meal...sorry but there is no way to request it for standby travel, so you'll have to bring your own munchies.  Most importantly, however, if you don't make it on the flight or the flight is cancelled or your luggage is lost ABSOLUTELY DO NOT yell at the gate agent and make a scene or your friend seriously could get fired, since the gate agent has your name from the list and will be able to find out who gave you the standby ticket.  I'm completely serious about this - when I worked for an airline they would stress this at almost every quarterly meeting.

I'm not trying to put you off of flying standby, though.  I listed a couple times where I had problems, but I've also gotten on many times, and if not for standby travel I never would have gone to the Bahamas or Quebec, wouldn't have seen my long-distance relatives as many times as I have, and wouldn't have gotten home so easily after someone caused a car accident while I was on a road trip to the East coast.  So it's worth it, you just have to approach it with the attitude of maybe it'll happen and maybe it won't, and if it won't there's nothing you can do about it.