A friend of mine was traveling yesterday and ran into a standby problem that showcases how poorly American Airlines trains its airport agents and supervisors. Yes, you are allowed to standby on an earlier American Airlines flight. No, American Airlines does not only allow standby at certain airports.
American Airlines Agent Says Standby Is only Available At Certain Airports
My friend was flying from Burbank (BUR) in Southern California to Phoenix (PHX) on American Airlines yesterday afternoon. He booked his ticket using Alaska Airlines miles. Upon checking in, he was offered the chance to confirm himself on the evening fight to Phoenix, but the option to go standby or confirm on the morning flight was not offered (because the flight was zeroed out at the time).
He showed up at Burbank Airport a hour before the morning flight, without checked baggage, and asked to be placed on the standby list. He reasonably figured there might be no-shows and wanted to get on his way as soon as possible to Arizona.
Turns out, there were no-shows and a number of seats available on the earlier flight, even after employee standbys were cleared. But a supervisor told him:
“Upper management does not allow it at Burbank…Standby policy varies by location and they don’t allow standby at Burbank.”
Of course this is a bunch of malarkey. AA’s standby policy is very clear:
There is no caveat that the ticket has to be issued by American Airlines. On the contrary:
Travel on partner airlines
If you bought a ticket with a partner airline for a flight operated by American, you can stand by or buy a same-day confirmed change. Use your American Airlines confirmation code to view your trip.
Despite saying that standby (in general) was “not allowed” at BUR, the agent showed my friend his monitor and pointed to the red bar setting, “Unfortunately, same day standby is not available for this reservation.”
I’m not familiar with AA’s passenger service system or how to override this prompt (pressing F3 perhaps?), but the AA policy is very clear…there is no exclusion for award travel.
I told my friend I would write about this, but also encouraged him to write into American Airlines. The agent may have been nice enough at Burbank, but he was misnformed and his refusal to figure it out (or call a help desk to figure it out) strikes me as very poor customer service. The flight morning needlessly departed with opens seats and my friend sat for three hours waiting for the next flight.
CONCLUSION
Standby is permitted to an earlier American Airlines flight. Full stop.
I’m not sure what the disconnect is between the explicit AA policy and the screen above, but the earlier flight went out with many opens seats and my friend needlessly had to wait several hours for his original flight. That is not the way this should work and I hope that American Airlines will read this and make clear to its airport staff that 1.) standby is permitted on all tickets and 2.) show them how to to make it happen.
“Standby is permitted to an earlier American Airlines flight. Full stop.”
Computer says no.
@Aaron … +1 .
Who was the agent behind the counter? Lucas or Walliams?
I’ve never experienced a frequent flyer partner program that releases the award reservation before check in officially starts for the scheduled itinerary in the partner airline. I’ve been simply told the issuing award program doesn’t make available the ticket for the carrier to find it in their system.
AA has control of ticket after check-in.
We are at the point now that written policies or human intervention do not matter very much. The only thing that matters and that will be allowed to happen is whatever the computer system says. It is only going to get more and more like this as AI starts making more decisions, and the humans running the system will gradually lose control. Welcome to your new overlord.
Finding an agent that is knowledgeable and knows how to override the computer system will be increasingly difficult, and will eventually reach the point that the computer will no longer allow “itself” to be overridden.
@jcil … +1 .
Overriding the computer can cost a gate agent his/her job; therefore, most are not willing, frankly.
It does say certain flights and there are exceptions for confirmed same day changes, the way I’m interpreting it and apparently American is too is that it also applies to same day stand by. And it does say some exclusions apply. So I thing you’re in the wrong here Matt.
There are no listed exceptions for standby that are noted (and also no restrictions noted for tickets that are not on 001 stock). I think you’re way off here.
Plus, AA.com and the mobile app allowed for a same-day confirmed change to the later flight, just not the earlier one.
Unfortunately if QIK wont allow it there is nothing the agent can do. AA sunset native SABRE some time ago, so a manager would be unable to override it either.
This was a key question I had.
United has the new front-end but agents can still access the “green screen” SHARES system and effectively do whatever they want.
So no such thing at AA?
I asked a buddy of mine who works for AA in Corporate and if QIK doesn’t allow it, it is not allowed.
I asked if agents have access to the backend Sabre and he said, all any AA agent has access to is QIK.
I agree the wording says it should be possible, but AA doesn’t give much leeway to agents and the training is if QIK says it is not allowed, it is not allowed.
See my other comment below – standby should have still been doable within QIK using the other option when pressing F3. To your question, there is a native Sabre “screen” within QIK but it doesn’t work very well and will often prompt you to use QIK entries…it’s not the full Sabre interface. Regardless, I found there are very few things that QIK won’t allow but Sabre will. You just have to know how to do it (but this agent did not), and QIK is usually much slower than Sabre.
I use to be a manager for AA. No we cannot override it. If it says the ticket is not eligible then its not eligible. Corporate took all control from managers. We would have to call a help line and most of the time they will refuse to do it. Only certain circumstances will they change anything. They don’t allow agents to give customer service.
Ctrl C, F3, option 3
Please agents, adapt to rules and regs.
Standby has been an option since covid. Stop using SDS!
Yes you can standby, domestically. Until the change again. So today jan 2024, it allowed.
I guess I don’t understand why standby was even the thing at issue if he was right there, the flight had empty seats, how is “stand by” when they could just change his ticket to the earlier flight? At the point where the boarding was almost complete they should have been able to do that, right? How would it be standing by when you can clearly confirm a seat at that point? It is bizarre.
You have to go on standby to be cleared onto flight.
If you’re not confirmed on the flight, you’re a standby customer. Even if the flight is wide open, you go on a standby list until an agent clears it, at which point you go from being standby to confirmed. Agents can’t just move passengers from one flight to another, unless it’s for irregular ops. If it’s voluntary, that’s considered a ticket change that requires re-faring. Occasionally you might get an agent who will process you on the spot, but that basically involves clearing you as a standby early when it’s clear the plane will have empty seats.
Burbank is usually performance limited for single engine gradient as well as runway length (balanced field) ….. as such centralized load planning probably coordinates with commercial/sales to limit flexibility for this and a handful of similar destinations (think short runways or mountainous and high elevation airports). You get what you have paid for and if your friend wanted to fly on the earlier flight they should’ve paid for it.
Other standbys were cleared and the supervisor even said he would clear my friend if he could find a way on the list (after mentioning the erroneous airport rule).
Regardless of the false outrage expressed above, awards tickets have NEVER been available for standby changes.
First, you’re wrong. I’ve done it myself (though at LAX, not BUR).
Second, if this was a policy, one might think it would be spelled out clearly under the AA page I linked to.
Did you not read the line in the picture that says “ALL changes must go through Alaskan Airlines “? This is a change
That does not mean same-day changes.
It’s a change.
Perhaps you should apply at AA and become part of management as you think you know everything
I read your blog from time to time and
You interpret rules as you like, not based on reality.
The rules are changing and you will need an Advantage number IN GOUR BOOKING to standby. Not in your wallet, not on your phone, “see I have one”, no, in your PNR to stand by. So Alaska, BA, IB, etc revenue or award will not be able to stand by. And agent will not change your number to accommodate you either.
And it’s “control n” to access Sabre is possi”ble but agents haven’t been trained on Sabre for years.
Change is not effective until March 1, 2024.
I standby and SDC AA award tickets all the time.
You’re right. The agent could’ve used F3, but option number 3 and not number 2. As long as there is no checked baggage and you have an active AAdvantage account in the reservation, you can be put in the standby list. (Perhaps your friend didn’t have their AAdvantage account listed in the reservation)
Well, the passenger can always BUY a ticket for the flight they REALLY want to be on. Tired of the cheap seats flying stand by on the desirable flights. AA is leaving a lot of money on the table.
This!! If you wanna fly on a certain flight. Buy the ticket for it.
*rolleyes*
This is an absurd reply. The whole point of same day travel changes is to provide flexibility for exactly this scenario. And no, it’s not a “favour” – it’s very much part of the major US carriers overall travel proposition.
When AA expressly outlines the rules (as Matt has posted above), it’s reasonable to expect that these rules will be followed on-the-day.
To those claiming there is an issue with a partner award redemption, I have booked American Arlines flights via Avios and done standby multiple times (always on short hops like DCA or BOS to LGA). There has never been an issue
There is most definitely a way to manually add people to the standby list.
Seems a systems issue more than a personnel issue
The fact that there’s a big red line saying standby not allowed on this ticket is in conflict with the published rules.
That’s the root.
Also odd it has the ‘all changes must be done by alaska partner desk’ message when it’s within the checkin window where AA has control. Though I do see the note further down the screen where it says for IRROPs the aa agent can help.
AA’s reply will be interesting. Looking forward to the follow up on this one.
I spent 36 years at the other guys.
Our private policy was always
“Put the meat in the seat”
what if the later flight gets canceled?
This guy is one less person to worry about.
Put him on the plane, even if you have to add him to the manifest in crayon
Anybody who says, well if you want to fly in the earlier flight, just purchased a ticket is a moron. There should always be flexibility, and room for standby passengers on a flight that has empty seats. No questions asked, if you have empty seats on the flight, you should fill them. How do you know that the original flight they were on won’t require those empty seats due to mechanical, weather, or something else. How shallow, completely stupid and ridiculous it is to just say, well if you want to fly on an earlier flight, buy the ticket.
I recently from CMH – SGN via ORD – DOA. The flight from CMH – ORD was booked for 1530hr (and already delayed), I had arrived at the gate about 13:30 and saw that the 1PM flight was delayed. Walked up to the gate agent and asked if I could switch, she took my 2 tickets and changed on the spot (tickets bought through partner Airline). No standby required. No extra fee. No Hassel.
The policy you quoted does indeed say exclusions for select flights, and “Flights from Burbank” would indeed be select flights.
It also says based on availability, and empty seats and availability are not always the same thing!
It appears you don’t understand how standby works…
The flight was not weight restricted and there were open seats. It was an odd system limitation and the inability of the gate agent to get around it.
The “exclusions” you refer to cannot plausibly mean what happened here.
That screen shoot is hilarious!!
Looks like Windows XP or 7 sitting on top of a mainframe with a T3 cable connection.
Perhaps American needs to focus more on diversity and equity hires. If they had the socially-approved number of poorly educated minority-identifying, sexually-fluid, gender variable, intellectually-challenged agents, then somebody could have worked it out. Probably the legacy agent who is being pushed out of a job due to competence and skin color.
What is wrong with people that they need to write this stuff, how does the skin colour or sexual orientation of an AA airport employee have anything to do with this issue? Ugh.
Poorly informed agent and supervisor. QIK has an automated path and a manual path. If the automated path fails (due to system limitations) as long as other conditions are met and they are in this case, the agent uses the manual path.
So interesting! I’ve run into some issues standing by from JFK-LAX (being cleared in Economy, and being told I couldn’t standby). Thankfully, they were all fixed at some point, but definitely agree that there must be some gap in training.
This is why American Airlines new motto (after being bought by US Air) is ‘ We aren’t happy till you not happy!’ The customer s satisfaction is an afterthought. Very sad commentary for an airline that used to be an elite carrier when it came to customer service.
Why anyone wants to fly AA is still amazing to me. Management treats employees like crap, employees treat me like crap. If I am going to be treated like crap, I would select Spirit, at least I know I couldnt expect more for the price I paid to fly them compared to AA. Delta has never bumped me from a flight (AA has). Delta has never denied me check-in because I was 1 minute late at the kiosk for self check in (AA did , co-worker and myself were literally checking in at the same time at the Kiosk , he made it by 30 seconds, I was denied and gate agent could give 2 shts).
As someone familiar with AA policy and its systems, the agent was wrong and standby should have been allowed, but I can clear up what happened here. That red error message is from the same-day flight change & standby “ancillary” product, which is the same as what should be displayed (pending seat availability) in the app. This has specific eligibility rules before even attempting a change. Likely, the non-AA ticket was not included in the pre-programmed rules, so it errored out. Regardless, (only) airport agents can override this by manually adding someone to the standby list as an “RV” (voluntary standby), as long as the standby routing is the same. This is still done by pressing F3 in the screenshot above; there are two options there: the ancillary SDFC (failed here) or a manual add to the priority list. And, even if this manual add failed, there’s a third way to do it…all within QIK. Definitely just inexperienced staff and not a policy issue.
We were on international AA Business award tickets – arrived from DOH. Wanted to take the earlier flight from DFW back to home. AA agent said that because these were award tickets, no standby was allowed, only if available award seats are open (they were not).
I’ve seen extreme variability in what partner award tickets can do on AA operated flights and there’s no rhyme or reason for it. Sometimes it allows confirmed same day changes, sometimes standby, and sometimes nothing.
I’m just trying to establish (and think we have) that there is a way in QUIK to override this preliminary denial.
Same day standby shouldn’t be looked at as a right when there’s a good chance no seats will open up on an earlier flight, if that’s the flight you want book that flight. We watch it happen all day where people book the cheapest time then get angry when there aren’t seats on the flight they actually want. I find it hard to believe it was zeroed out at time of booking then left with TONS of open seats, although I’m not sure how you’d even check how many open seats there were?
It’s a gamble: you risk not getting on if you don’t buy a confirmed ticket. That’s fair enough. But standby and SDC is a policy of AA, not some hidden exploitative loophole.
I suspect what happened was that the passenger was traveling on a partner award. If that is the case, the rules of the partner would apply and that may include no standby. If AA wants to let someone standby that’s fine, but that would explain that big red bar.
The computer always goes through rules validation if the reservation is attempting to be changed, even if it’s just to put someone on the standby list. That way it prevents someone from standing by on a time-specifc fare that would apply at a different time of day.
“We don’t do standby” is just another example of ill- and hastily trained airline people brought on after Covid.
At BUR, I doubt this was even an AA employee.
It’s AA. They make shit up as they go.