Standby Tickets

Legacy_user

Does anyone know how to get the best chance at a standybuy ticket (flight).
Tried opodo, cheapflights ect., but flight to New York still £450 the same day.
I do live near Bristol Airport,and they have a limited number of flights into New York. Do I just turn up ?
Any help would be most appriciated.
Miss Sug :-*

Elljay_2

In my experience which is limited to a small regional airport (that has major airlines and charter outfits), there is no such thing as a standby ticket. If you want to go from BRS, I suggest you ring the airline and ask if they do them and then go from there. Usually going to US you need to book as far in advance as poss for the cheapest flt. If you see a good price I'd take it and don't wait for it to drop because most airlines don't care if the seat goes empty rather than disounting it!!!
Charter flights may be different though. Good Luck!!

Fatboy_NSS

Uh, I don't think you'll find any flights from Bristol to the US. They've been rumoured for years bat haven't happened yet. They did have some charter flights to Canada a few years back, but not the USA.

Also, standby flights pretty much don't exist anymore except for airline staff. The reason for this is that airlnes have realised that most of the people who want to book at the last minute are business travellers who they can charge a high premium for these tickets. Therefore if a flight to the US has say 4 empty seats, they'd rather sell one to a business traveller for £1000 and leave three empty than sell them all standby for £100 each. Airline employees have special passes that entitle them to standby rates if there are any seats available, but at this time of year the number of empty seats is very limited so even they would find it hard to get standby.

System

Thanks for that Fatboy.........now I know why it is proving impossible! Have to rethink our flight dates and book well in advance.