The Joys of flying Standby
I must say, it is an awesome perk to have a friend who can fly you anywhere in the world for $150. I am so grateful for such an opportunity.
We are currently in Vancouver and the only flight to Seoul was full. That’s right, all 208 seats were on time and not a single person missed their flight.
A little more detail. There was a party of 4 flying standby who had one step ahead of us in priority but there was only 3 seats available. So for a little while it was looking pretty damn good for us.
Now, before I go any further, I should explain the standby setup. Typically most people know that if you fly standby, you only get on if there is a seat available. This is obvious. What isn’t obvious is that in order for Airline employees to get their great discounts, they have to fly standby. In general, airline employees tend to get a little higher priority that regular standby but not quite the assumed ‘caste’ system of choosing who gets to go and who does not.
What happened in out case is that the party of 4 standby included an employee who was a stewardess. She asked if she could have the ‘jump seat’ and as it was the captains call, he allowed it. For those who aren’t familiar with ‘the jump seat’, it’s just a little seat really only meant for temporary usage under certain circumstances(“an auxiliary seat for individuals – other than normal passengers – who are not operating the aircraft”) The employee opted to take this seat for her 16hr flight. Not the most pleasant way to fly but if you have to get somewhere, then you do what you have to. Unless she wanted to wait till next tuesday before there was another flight out of Vancouver to Seoul. Which was now our problem.
Currently, my friend of working furiously with another co-worker to get us to Korea. We may actually have to fly BACK to Toronto…..which would suck.
Stay tuned…
Categories: Korea, Me
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November 7th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Don Belmore, Don Belmore. Don Belmore said: New post: The Joys of flying Standby http://dragondon.net/2010/11/the-joys-of-flying-standby/ #dragndon [...]
November 9th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
How many air miles did you fly in 3 days? How many countries did you fly over? You wanted to travel the world and you are doing it .Interested reading for a lot of people.