American’s Stand-by Plan

One of the things I hate most about air travel is how you get
locked in to your itinerary. The whole supply and demand thing has allowed airlines to be completely inflexible when it
comes to making changes to your trip, let alone booking early. And so for years now we’ve had “book two weeks in
advance” offers where you can lock in a lower price, but you are locked in to your schedule. And lets say you wanted to
go standby or make a change on the day of a flight. Good luck. Making changes is very costly.

Well, I was interested to read recently that American Airlines and some others are making
small adjustments to the policy for going stand-by.
Travelers on American can now choose a new option that lets you confirm a seat on an alternate flight on the same day,
within three hours of the scheduled departure time of the alternate flight.

Called “Confirmed Flight Change,” it seems like a nice idea, although you are limited to a narrow window and (of
course) have to pay a fee. But given how much this kind of change USED to cost, the fee ($25) ain’t so bad. 
Here’s another limitation: The new $25 option for same-day travel changes is allowed on flights only in the United
States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and to the Caribbean. The plan, as I understand it, is similar to options
offered by Northwest and Delta, whose “FlyNow” and “same-day confirmed” options offer similar flexibility.

Personally, I long for the day when there is real, cheap flexibility in flying, but given the state of the industry
today, that’s still probably a long way off.