How to Travel When Flying Standby is No Longer an Option

•  Step 1: Ugly cry.  
• Step 2: Wipe your tears. 
• Step 3: Find Travel Deals or Let Travel Deals Come to You. 
• Step 4: Continue Traveling, but with a Confirmed Ticket/Seat! 

For me, it was devastating to lose out on my favorite benefit, but after some time I quickly learned that finding airfare with a travel deal meant that I would be able to get to where I wanted when I had planned with confirmed travel and this is part of the reason why I started sharing travel deals.

Oh, that magical word, “confirmed.” As in “confirmed seat” or “confirmed ticket!” Flying as a “non-rev” or “standby” passenger is one of the best benefits any travel lover could ever ask for, but there was always the uncertainty of getting on the flight.  I am forever grateful for the time I had a standby traveler and how it taught me to be a flexible traveler, but those benefits are now gone and I found myself feeling the pains of transitioning away from these benefits.

So what do you do when you want to travel, but have to pay for tickets? Start spending your time finding travel deals and booking those seats!

It’s a pretty easy process, but there are some things you will have to adjust to. 

1. Traveling on the Fly (or whenever you feel like it): It won’t be as easy to just hop on a plane for the weekend or do a last minute trip. You will have to start planning for vacations.
2. Be Flexible with Travel Dates: If you traveled like I did, you know that being flexible with travel is key. How does it differ? You will have to be flexible with the dates that the travel deals provide.  Travel deals or flash sales have specific date ranges, but they typically have quite a range of date offerings you can select from.  If a flight deal comes up that you love, but the dates don’t work for what you need – that can be a bummer – just wait, maybe there is a different deal that pops up that works better for you. The nice thing is that a lot of flight deals are months in advance so you can better plan for your upcoming vacation.
3. Spend Time Looking for Travel Deals or Sign Up to Get Notified About Deals: You can spend time searching the web with various travel deal sites like this one.  Tip to save yourself time, you can subscribe to my site and get deals emailed right to your email box when they are posted.  Just add your email address in the “Subscribe” box below. You will only receive information on flight deals, experiences and tips. Your information will not be shared with a third party.
4. You have a confirmed seat!  How nice is this!? I remember my first flight with a confirmed ticket… I looked at my mom and asked her if we can fly like this all the time. She laughed and reminded me that it’s expensive to have confirmed seats. But as you likely know by now, it doesn’t have to be! A positive to having a confirmed seat? You don’t have to worry about if there will be enough seats available on the flight (well to an extent… they may still oversell the flight or have a cancellation, but this time you have a real ticket and they will have to accommodate you to some level like with a travel voucher, gift card or maybe even a flight upgrade).

Sure, you won’t be saving as much money as if you were flying with non-rev or standby benefits, but I’ve found that you can save quite a bit. We saved $5,354 on just four trips we booked direct with the airlines by finding travel deals.