I recently flew standby for the first time and wanted to share my experience with American Airlines so that others might learn what I did right and what mistakes I made that others can learn from.
Background: 2 of us were trying to get home to South Carolina (CAE) from Chicago O’Hare (ORD) on July 31st. The original flight was supposed to leave at 6:33 pm and get us back to CAE around 11 pm. At 11:30 that morning, I received an email notification that our first flight was delayed to 7:45 pm, and that they would get back in touch. Upon a quick look at our connection I knew that if we didn’t get from O’Hare to Charlotte Douglas Airport sooner that we would miss our connection to Columbia which was the last flight back for the day. I thought, okay- well the system knows this so I am sure they will get back to us with a new schedule or email us or call me or really anything that would get us home.
I waited an hour. Then I started to get concerned. Why weren’t they re-booking us on an earlier flight to CLT? There were 2, or so I thought. I decided to take matters into my own hands and see if I could reschedule us onto an earlier flight online. Alas, since it was the same day, I had to call customer service.
2-3 hour wait for a callback. I wish I was kidding. We needed to be at the airport in 3 hours anyway but I still said yes to the callback. When the agent finally called us back she explained that we wouldn’t get home that night and that there weren’t any other flights. I (kindly) let her know that I saw a 5 pm flight to Charlotte. She said that she didn’t see it. Silence. I asked her to please look again and that maybe I had the time off slightly when I saw it. Bingo. There was a 4 pm flight that was delayed until 5:30. It would get us to Charlotte in time to catch our original flight. She also mentioned that there was an earlier flight to Columbia and she put us on standby for that flight as well.
Lesson learned #1: Get on standby over the phone- NOT in person (as long as you have enough time to wait for a person to call you back on the phone). They actually will prioritize people put on standby by agents that are not at the gate. We did get placed on standby by a phone agent. It didn’t save us for the first flight but boy it sure did help for the second.
We get to the airport and to our gate for our standby flight. We are #5 and #7, respectively. I go up to the gate agent and let her know that we are present and need to get on this flight to be able to make our connection home. She says there are open seats and that we have a decent chance of getting on the flight. I express my gratitude, and I start to relax my shoulders a little. We go grab some Chicago pizza from Reggio’s Pizza in the food court and eat.
A half hour later I go back to look at the gate / standby list and all of a sudden we are listed #11 and #13. We had dropped down to the middle of the list. I’m confused. How did that happen? Well…. American will prioritize their standby list on 2 things: 1) Your status with the airline and 2) How much you paid for your ticket. We start chatting with a guy next to us (Let’s call him Ted) and he is like oh yeah, I am on the later flight to Charlotte but I put myself on standby because I live in Charlotte and I’d like to get home sooner. Because Ted has higher frequent flier status than us, he is put as a priority over us even though he doesn’t have a connecting flight to make. I explain to Ted that if we don’t get on the flight, we won’t get home tonight. He shrugged and walked away.
Lesson learned #2: Your order in the standby line means nothing, really. Especially in an overbooked flight situation, it’s going to change. A LOT. Don’t get excited. Stay close by in case you are called.
Time passes, the flight finally boards. We never had a chance. At some point we were as low as the 20s out of 40 to try and get on this flight. It was utterly disappointing. No communication from American about any of it. The gate agent was very hard to hear as well. It didn’t matter though, we didn’t get on that flight.
We eventually board and take our original flight that is delayed over an hour. At this point we are pretty worn down. The plane lands and I turn my phone back on as soon as I could. Lo and behold, our original flight to Columbia is waiting for takeoff. I am SO naïve. I think okay, they must be holding the plane for us- there are at least 4 of us on this flight going to Columbia. It’s the last flight of the evening. Surely American Airlines wants to save the money of putting us up in hotels and treat us like human beings?
We start hustling to our original gate. The airport at CLT is just chaotic for such a late hour. People are everywhere- walking, running, laying down, slamming a last beer before every restaurant and bar closes. We come up to an American Airlines customer service desk and the line is insane. I tell my husband that we should probably get in line. He says, nah let’s head towards the original gate. Hopefully a gate agent is still there and they can help us. It is a trip from E terminal to B terminal, a solid 15 minute walk. We see another customer service desk where B terminal starts but with a shorter line. I ask my husband to go to the gate and I get in the line. He’s returned in just a couple of minutes- plane is gone; no gate agent; abandon ship. So we wait in the customer service line.
Lesson Learned #3: You can get cut in this line (The American Airlines Customer Service Desk) by any person in a wheelchair. Take this information as you will. I am not saying it is right or wrong, but there was a group of 4 ladies in their 60s and one was in a wheelchair with an ankle in a cast and they went straight to the front and took their darn time getting help.
We get up to the counter to try and salvage something out of this trip. Our goal was to get a voucher/ reimbursement for an Uber or a Lyft home. Lyft was looking like $116 plus tip; likely cheaper than a hotel room.
The agent says, wait, you’re on standby for this EARLIER flight to Columbia that got delayed later than the original late flight. They are boarding now. RUN.
We run. Kevin is a much faster runner than I so he sprints ahead while I jog as fast as I can with my rolling carry on.
We get to the gate and there are our names on standby! The only 2 names! And we get up to the front and the lady is like, where is your boarding pass? We only had passes for the original connection to Columbia that left without us. That agent sends us back down to another gate to get printed boarding passes as her computer won’t work. At this point, we are sweaty, exhausted and stressed. If we don’t get on this flight….
We hustle back to another agent, and she can’t get our passes to print. At this time the 2 other people for Columbia from our Chicago flight also show up, sweaty and stressed and not on the standby list. Within the next 10 tense minutes, everything gets sorted and the 4 of us are the last to board the flight and we actually made it back to Columbia that night.
Lesson Learned #4: Set up text notifications yourself for every flight. If you have a delay, get some notifications going on other flights. — When we were put on standby on the phone call way back at the beginning of my post, we didn’t realize that we weren’t going to get any notifications for the standby flights. Rookie move.
*IF* I had set up notifications, we would have saved a half hour of stress because we would have known the standby flight to Columbia was still in Charlotte.
*IF* I had set up those notifications, I would have known to look for that flight on the Departures board. Kevin and I had tunnel vision once we landed in Charlotte. I never got the flight number in my brain for the standby flight, so I never looked for it even though it was right there on the board.
If this post helps even one single person out there, then it was worth my time to write this. Good luck out there!
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