4 reasons that charging for standby makes no sense

As much as travelers may not like them, airline fees are here to stay. And to be fair, there is a certain logic in “unbundling” the components of a trip. Travelers who bring their own food can save money, travelers who aren’t fussy about their seat assignments don’t have to pay for premium seats, and travelers traveling light aren’t subsidizing passengers who check several bags.

But of all the airline fees, the standby fee seems to me to be the most unnecessary and potential the most counter productive.

Here’s a few reasons why.

1. On-time performance is hugely important to airlines. Charging for standby is another way to slow down the boarding process. Standby seats are usually not available until 30 minutes prior to departure, sometimes less than that. Which means agents are processing payments right at the time they are boarding the plane.

If airlines take the payment in advance, then presumably this means a lot of refund work if standby doesn’t clear.

And what about the last-minute seat availability? On my flight today, my seatmate’s husband was able to board at the last minute after being told there were no more seats. But a flight attendant’s head count showed two empty seats so they rushed two people on board. (And apparently not the next two people on the standby list, but the only two people who remained in the boarding area.)

For this reason, a semi-standby system, (like United’s) which allows passengers to confirm a seat four hours prior to departure for a fee makes some sense as far as the boarding process at least.

2. There are not that many empty seats on planes these days. Therefore, whenever an airline has a chance to fill one with a ticketed passenger from a later flight, this means a potentially empty seat that can be sold later.

And even if that later flight has seats too, things can change. Another flight could be canceled, there could be a mechanical or other delay, or some passengers could decide to book last minute (especially say if another airline has problems).

It’s not even a question of extra meals on board to put a passenger on an earlier flight. But it’s one less potential problem for later.

3. Business travelers hate standby in any case. In my experience, they will pay the change fee, or something like United’s semi-standby so they know they have a confirmed seat.

Besides, one person flying on an earlier flight only opens one seat. Families can open up several. But, by putting a fee on standby, this decreases the chances that they, or other vacation travelers, will switch flights.

I had a family of four on Southwest, which was the first airline curiously enough to charge for standby, returning from San Diego earlier this year. They got to the airport early, asked about availability on an different flight and were told it was open but it would be over $200 total to change.

So they ended up just eating lunch at the airport. And told me later that their flight was completely full and left other standbys at the gate.

4. Standby travel has, in addition to opening up seats on later flights, has been a basically free source of goodwill for airlines. Getting on an earlier flight and thus getting to a destination earlier always feels a bit like winning the lottery. Even a middle seat doesn’t seem so bad.

But paying for that change, especially after potentially having paid a nonrefundable seat fee on the first flight, takes away a lot of that nice feeling.

There is a new television show called “Undercover Boss” where executives temporarily work in relatively low level jobs in their own companies to see what it’s actually like on the front lines. Things like this standby fee make it seem as if airlines executives have not even watched their own boarding processes, let alone done the job.