• What's ticked?
• Accolades
• Contact us

c o l u m n s

• Cheap Charlie
• ChrisCrossings
• Err Travel
• Leocha
• Travel Notes
• Archives

Hectic Holidays
Cheap Charlie · February 12, 2001

I just returned from a standby trip on a frequent flier ticket from Boston to Charleston, SC. If you've flown that route, you know that the bottleneck is getting in and out of Charleston.

There always seem to be too many travelers and too few seats. Someday that will change.

Between Christmas and New Years I decided to fly to Charleston to see my mother. It was at the last minute and I had no interest in forking over more than $1,000 to fly down on short notice.

I decided to get a frequent flier ticket. I am lucky since I have one of the higher levels of frequent flier membership that allows travel during normally blacked-out times.

First the airline told me that they did not have any frequent flier seats available during the time I wanted to travel. "OK," I said. I then asked, "Can I fly standby if I have a ticket for another day?" The answer was, "Of course."

I then found an open reservation later in the week, about four days after the day I really wanted to travel. I was pleased until the reservationist told me that in order to get that ticket, I would have to pay an additional $50 fee.

"Heck," I protested, "I'm not even traveling on that day." We spoke some more and the agent came up with a new solution. He could book me on a flight more than two weeks in the future for no cost. (It seems getting a frequent flier ticket within a few days of traveling incurs additional charges.)

I agreed that this was a great solution.

So the agent made reservations for me in mid-January and told me that I could go to the airport and simply tell the person at the check-in counter that I wanted to fly on the next available flight.

I did this. I arrived in Charleston with no problem, flying on virtually empty flights from Boston to DC then on to South Carolina the day after Christmas.

The return was another story.

After only spending two days with Mom, I heard about an impending snowstorm getting ready to cruise up the East Coast. It was going to hit Boston on the day before I was planning my standby trip home.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that flying standby the day after the "storm of the decade" might be problematic. It would be tough for those with confirmed reservations, let alone those with no reservations.

The Weather Channel was abuzz with dire predictions. I knew that if I did not leave early, I might not get back to Boston until the middle of the week.

In the end, I called to change my return flight reservations from mid-January to New Years Day. Surprisingly, the airline said, "no problem." They still had frequent flier seats and because of the storm had waived all fees for changing reservations.

The lesson here is, ask and you may receive. If you don't ask, you'll never learn your way around the system when weather-wrecked schedule disaster strikes.

I admit, I was very lucky. The luck continued when the storm missed Boston. New Years Day turned out to be a fine day to travel from Charleston to Charlotte, then on to Boston.

I'm glad I didn't have to get to New York City.

Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at leocha@aol.com or access his Web site.