How to fly standby last minute cheap flights to New York?

You could try a courier flight? New York is quite a busy route for courier flights… you can find more at:
http://www.aircourierinternational.com/

Buying standby lights is pretty much a thing of the past now – unlike in the golden age of Laker Skytrain (and the competition he created with his all-standby flights), these days standby tickets are not really marketed anymore – standby is largely confinded to passengers changing flights at the last minute onto already full flights. Even lastminute don’t really do standby – they sometimes sell seats cheap very close to departure to help clear airline unsold inventory, but once bought from lastminute the ticket is usually not issued on a standby basis

The reasons for standby as a form of revenue travel (note its still very prevalent for industry discount/staff tickets) are primarily (1) a lot of flights are going full (2) processing standby passengers involves a lot of work at the last minute before dispatching a flight which risks a flight delay (3) security – needing to supply passenger details [APIS] well in advance of departure and (4) there’s less market for standby now as the really cheap fares couldn’t be made much cheaper on a standby basis- a high proportion of the cheapest fares is tax which cannot be circumvented

Andy

skyscanner.net and lastminute.com come to mind.

I don’t think any specialises in standby bookings though. Wouldn’t make for a good business selling tickets that only have a 5% chance of being honoured (if that).

Moderators watching this thread very closely. If a pop-up poster arrives with a link to a site it will be removed.

Moggy
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