Paging Cuse or anyone who can help with flying standby question

Do you mean the 749am flight on Charlotte - Chicago? The 943am and your 11am flight are sold out if you truly meant AA 1038.

I don't actually see a 641am

Do you realize how much it sucks for inexperienced travelers to wake up at 0300? Even if you made the early flight, that's going to impact the rest of your day.

Now that I have the right flights, the early MEM-ORD is completely sold out in coach, but they're selling 3 seats in first class. Your flight is completely sold out in both classes.

This is a tough call. I'd hate for you to go early and say only 1 of you gets on, does just one of you get on the early flight?

I'm curious, does the upgrade list show up yet in the app? There may be 3 people that get upgraded to first class, but that still doesn't mean that coach has open seats. Might be oversold in the back...

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So how come there are available seats showing when I try to book this flight? I went through the steps and had 10 seat options

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What this means is there are 10 other people that purchased coach tickets that don't have seat assignments yet. They could have booked the cheapest tickets and the only seats left are extra legroom or priority seats. The seat map is not a good judge of available seats in this case unfortunately

How I'd look at this situation-
1. If you get to the airport for the early flight and don't get on, are you okay waking up early and sitting in MEM for 4 hours?
2. If you wake up for your later flight and get to Chicago 4 hours later, is that okay?

If you're tagging along and she wants to try for it, I say go for it . Worst case you sit in memphis for a while, get coffee, breakfast, take a nap. Best case you get there much earlier and have the whole day in Chicago. A lot of people wake up late and miss the early flights as well.

Good luck to her in the race!

Thanks. She’s running injured .. doc said she’s good to try. It’s just going to really suck for her. Hopefully the crowd and race day vibes will carry her through. Going to do my best to find her at various spots on the course.

Thanks again.

(I may think twice about choosing seats again lol .. maybe I’ll get bumped up!)

At this moment the standby list shows 2 available and still only 3 with us at the top. Hoping it stays that way.

Not sure what it says about me, but I came to check. Glad you made it. Enjoy the weekend!

Glad you made the earlier flight!

For future reference - the very early flights tend to be the best for standby. You get a lot more no shows and plan cancellations on the early flights so seats will open up.

But also, if you are flying out of a hub city, you will also get more last minute additions to the standby list as that is where all of the airline employees live and they tend to make last second trip planning, especially on weekends.

But also, many of the employees that add their name to the standby list last minute also no show or change their plans.

I've done this a lot. Flying for free can be so rewarding but also incredibly frustrating, especially now that that airline software is better at filling the plane seats.