Best way to see how booked a flight is?
 

Is there any way?

I want to fly standby on a flight tonight to avoid a co-worker but I don't want to end up going to the airport and not getting on standby and having an even more uncomfortable experience.

-Rudey

Can you go to the airline website and look that up? My roommate used to fly stand by all the time and I swear that's what she did.

You can call up the airline, sweet talk the girl on the other line and most of the time they'll tell you.

There's some airlines that have it on their website. I'm pretty sure that you can view the open and closed seats on both the Delta and American Airlines webiste.

Doesn't your company have a travel agent they use? The travel agent can look it up.

WTF?

Overbooked by 2 seats, 3 seats open, with nobody on the standby list yet?

What does that even mean? How can you be overbooked with 3 open seats?

-Rudey

Dude just get hammered and fly on your co-workers flight. Hilarity will ensue!

-Lil' Hannah
--Post stories when you get back!

I was planning on calling in sick tomorrow. He wasn't supposed to be on my flight.

-Rudey

Oh so you're skipping town just to avoid the co-worker, who will be in the office tomorrow?

No I made plans to skip town a while ago and to call in sick. This guy, who is older than me, just happens to be sent to the same fricking city tomorrow to meet with a client. I'm skipping work; he's not.

-Rudey

ohh ok gotcha gotcha.

All airlines try to sell as many seats as possible on a flight and usually they allot X number of seats even if they're over capacity because they factor in the possibility of no-shows and cancellations. In the event everybody shows up for the flight, it's cheaper to give out travel vouchers or some sort of compensation to those denied boarding than if that seat wasn't sold in the first place.

I actually remembered something from my first week of training at United.

What are the chances that I could get onto a flight that's "Overbooked by 2 seats, 3 seats open, with nobody on the standby list yet" and is there anything i can do to help those chances?

Thank you.

-Rudey

Those are pretty good odds of getting on the flight. Especially if its just you. Get there early to get on the list before others. I woudl say you have a very good chance of flying out tonight.

This all comes from a airline child who only got to fly stand-by her whole life.