When I booked my trip to Ohio, I booked the flights first and then the rental car. I should have done it the other way around but for whatever reason, I thought it would be fine. Once I got around to it, I found the prices to be pretty high but there was nothing I could really do as I couldn’t adjust my flight without paying a big fare difference. When I picked up the car, the guy at Hertz said that I would save over $170 if I returned the car at 1:30pm instead of 7:30pm. I sure wasn’t about to pay $170 for a few extra hours of a trip so I said ok, 1:30pm it is and that’s how he set it up. I could still bring the car back later but I’d be charged the $170.
There were no other earlier flights cheaper than $190 on Southwest for that day and hanging out at CMH for half the day wasn’t my idea of a good time. I could drop the car off and then Uber somewhere to kill time but then I’d have to check my luggage and I’d probably wind up paying $50 worth of Uber fees at least which would eat into the cost savings. I thought about canceling this flight and getting flight credit that I would eventually use I guess and then book an earlier flight home on Breeze for about $120. I’d still be coming out ahead but that didn’t really sit well with me. Then I thought, what am I doing, Southwest has free same-day standby for everyone. I literally posted about this not too long ago. Same-day standby was for everyone including Wanna Get Away fares was just announced in August.
The thing is, I never really fly Southwest and so I haven’t tried out this new feature. Here’s how I went about it. First, I checked to make sure that Southwest had an earlier flight and they had two, one at 5am which was not going to work and one at 11am which was perfect. I checked in exactly 24 hours and got an awesome B2 boarding position. Once you check in, you are supposed to be able to click on manage reservation and then select same day standby. Problem is, it wasn’t there. Since this was at almost 10pm, I figured they actually wanted it to be the same day. So I figured I’d try in the morning.
As usual, if I have to get up early, I can’t sleep so since I was awake at midnight, I thought it’d try again so that I can make sure this works. Just as I expected, there was the same day stand by button. So I selected it and error message. Uh oh. This isn’t good. Am I waking up early and driving two hours for no reason? I tried several more times and nothing. Tried to Google the error and nothing. I assumed that it might be too early for their system to process and that everything would (hopefully) work out in the morning.
When I got up at 6am, I tried it again and this time, no error! I selected the exact flight I wanted and saw that there was only 1 other person on the stand by list and that I was somehow ahead of them. But how do I know if there’s any room? This is where it’s a bit of a gamble as there’s no exact way to tell how many seats are left on plane. As you know, you cannot select your seats on Southwest ahead of time. With every other airline, you can look at a seat map and at least get an idea. If you see 40 seats free, you know that at least half of them are probably empty since at least some people don’t have assigned seats yet. If you see just a few seats empty, the plane is likely close to full or full. With Southwest, there is no seat map that you can use to guestimate.
But what you can do is go to Southwest’s website and look at the flight you want. When the flight is full, it’ll say that there’s no seats available to purchase. When it’s close to full, it’ll tell you that there’s X amount of seat left. If you don’t see anything like that, you’re probably OK but to be safe, try to book 8 seats which is the max that Southwest allows on their website. If the same flight still comes up, there should be at least 8 seats empty. Assuming there aren’t crazy flight delays that day or the previous day, the odds of 8 or more people jumping ahead of you in the standby line are probably very slim. So even though I risked sitting at the airport from 9am to 9pm, I headed off to the airport at 7am.
By the time I got to the airport, someone else joined the standby list so I was now number 2 out of 3. Still pretty good. I went through security and about 10 minutes before boarding I noticed two people talking to the gate agent. I checked my app and sure enough, two people were cleared from the standby list leaving just me. How did the 3rd person line get ahead of me? My understanding was that unless there was something on the app saying that I needed to see the gate agent, I should clear right from the app. For whatever reason, this didn’t happen so I went over to the gate agent and politely asked if I’m going to make it. She said sure. I showed her my ID and she gave me my new boarding pass.
Despite me getting a horrible C45 boarding position, I was able to get an aisle seat with no one next to me in the middle. For what it’s worth, there were at least 8 empty seats from what I can see. Might be one or two more towards the front of the plane.
So, I saved over $130 on my rental car, I’m not getting home at midnight, I didn’t have to pay to change my flight and I got an aisle seat. It’s not every day that everything works out in your favor, but this is certainly one of those days. I know some of you love Southwest but I’m personally not a huge fan (but I wouldn’t say I hate it). It’s rarely a solid option for me but this time it was. I really like this same-day standby feature and it was really easy to use.
I guess my only nitpick is that you shouldn’t be able to go up to the gate agent to cut people in the standby line if that is indeed what happened. Perhaps it didn’t matter to the gate agent since there was clearly enough space but, in that case, I should have been cleared regardless. Not sure if that was the gate agent or the system itself. Regardless, my advice is to check in with the gate agent once it’s about 10 minutes before boarding if the app hasn’t already notified you that you cleared the list. And definitely take advantage of the ability to search for 8 tickets at a time to guestimate if you’ll clear standby. If it says the flight is unavailable for 8 tickets, keep reducing the number until it shows available. If only 4 are showing and you are number 5 on the standby list, there’s a good chance you won’t make it.
If you’ve used this feature before, let us know how your experience went in our Facebook group.