Stand-by Roulette

Some times you win, sometimes you loose.

Ironiclly I lost when playing stand-by roulette in Las Vegas.

I am able to do this trip so cheaply because I am a Qantas brat, and I am flying on Z tickets, which are airline industry stand by specials. Sure it only costs you like $50 to fly Las Vegas to San Fran, or $90 to fly from Vancouver to Toronto but you are not guranteed a seat on a flight, particulary when using "open" tickets like I am, which can be used any time until they expire (usually three or four months).

I guess I was up against pretty long odds, I wanted to fly out of Las Vegas on a Sunday, and sundays are generally one of the busiest times to fly, particualry the afternoons, but I just wanted out of vegas.

I was ticked on United.

The day before I checked the seats on the aircraft (a bloody scarebus A320, I blame them), and there was seven seats on the 0945 flight, and a few more on the 0615 and 0700 flights but I took my chances with the 0945. I was in the airport and checked in at 0830. I failed to get on the 0945, the 1630, the 1800 and the 2015 flights.

The flights were running about 45 mins to an hour late as well, due to weather at SFO which had created a back log of air traffic.

Actually I almost made it on the 2015 flight, which was delayed till about 2030. The flight had checked in almost full, and a few other standby peeps got on. I was pretty much bottom of the list as I was on a Qantas issued stand-by ticket.

As the flight was pretty much boarded there were three people who had checked in but not gone through the boarding gate. There was about five minutes before the doors were to close and one turned up. I got called over to the ticking counter and they told me to walk on with the ticket agent.

I was in the line the the dodgy bridge thingo when I heard a few words I had been dreading. "Mr Mevius, come back up please" and I saw two women running/waddling fast as they could down the air bridge.

Old mate at united was pretty good and told that me that my bags were on the way to SFO and I might be able to get on a US Airlines flight under a code share. It was departing at 2144 and they had some seats left.

I raced back over to ticketing and got my US Airways standby pass and then I eventually got through security and over to the gate. I was given a boarding pass at about 2115 and easily made it on.

Although due to air traffic it was delayed to 2255, i still got to san fran about midnight.