What is the priority for boarding standby passengers?
Every airline has its own priority system, but in general, the order for boarding standby passengers is as follows:
- Airline employees traveling on duty
- Airline employees traveling for leisure
- Family members of airline employees
- Friends of airline employees
- Other standby passengers
What to do after checking in?
Unless plenty of seats are available, you will probably get a boarding pass indicating 'SBY' instead of a seat number. Go to the gate and introduce yourself to the gate agent. They will keep your boarding pass and call you when you get a seat. Be sure to pay attention to the public announcements as your name will be called.
If the flight is full and you can't board, your luggage will be offloaded. Contact the gate agent after the boarding is complete to get yourself listed on the next flight. Your luggage will be loaded on that flight. If there's no next flight or you decide to try a different airline, ask the gate agent where to collect your luggage.
How to get cleared on standby?
Blogger Josh shares some invaluable tips on the StaffTraveler blog.
Non-rev tips and tricks
We wrote a blog with the 10 golden rules of non-rev travel. Here you go!