Will We Make It?

The joys of travelling stand-by. No, not joys. Stress? No, not quite. Benefits? Sure, but that’s not all. Challenges? Hmmm…yes. Challenges.

There is an extremely lucky subset of the population that has stand-by travel privileges at their wingtips. Once upon a time, it was possible to buy a stand-by ticket; this is no longer the case. You now need to be affiliated with an airline to be able to fly for pennies on the dollar. If you are a part of this group, please be taking full advantage. Jason, a commercial pilot for years, gave us this opportunity and we used it as often as possible.

Cairo | 2010

The benefits of stand-by travel usually outweigh the issues. You can fly anywhere in the world that your airline and their partners fly to. Your cost per ticket is almost always less than a tank of gas – and that’s before the gas prices ballooned to what they are today. The icing on the cake? The chances are decent that you will get seated in business class or first class because that is where there is room. Aaahhh, flying in style.

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? It is perfect. Until it isn’t. We once got seated in middle seats scattered throughout the plane. That can be a bit uncomfortable for the adults sitting beside our now unaccompanied 5 and 6 year olds. Sometimes we never got on the plane at all. Huh, now what? Or, worse case scenario, only half of us get seats. Do we go ahead and hope the other two get on the next flight? It is easier to find two seats instead of four, but what if??

There is a certain kind of stress that you get to experience flying like this. Will we make it there? Sure, that can be tricky, but in the end, if we don’t make it somewhere, we go home and try again another day. Will we make it back? That is where the real stress comes in. We both have jobs, the children have school. Yes, we are go-with-the-flow kind of people, but, we do have responsibilities we have to get back to.

Hong Kong | 2009

We have spent countless hours in airports, wandering from gate to gate, hoping that this is the flight we will get on. Only to watch the plane taxi away without us, again. You want to see how fast you can use up your children’s patience? Travel stand-by.

Through some trial and error, we managed to figure out how to put the odds of having a successful trip in our favour. For one, we didn’t choose the destination; based on seat availability, the destination chose us. And we always had a backup plan. Luckily, we usually didn’t care where we were going, just get us somewhere. We were also pretty flexible on the dates we travelled. The biggest accommodation we gave ourselves was allowing plenty of time to get home. We watched the flight loads constantly, ready to adapt our plans at the drop of a hat.

We travelled mainly like this for a few years. As the children got older, school became more important so our timing had to mesh with the school calendar. This meant we were travelling with the masses, and therefore fewer available seats on the airplanes. We came to the unfortunate conclusion that we were going to have to start paying full price for tickets.

<sigh>

I can truly say, even with all that can – and did – go wrong, I miss travelling stand-by. It comes with a feeling of spontaneity that you can’t replace. That feeling of dealing with whatever comes your way, of adapting, of overcoming, of letting the chips fall where they may, is extraordinary. Of course, now that we could do it without children, many of the stressors are gone.

So, if there is anyone out there wanting to use their stand-by privileges, but needs a travel partner or two, feel free to contact us. We’re already packed.