Beware of Booking a Basic Economy Airline Ticket

A friend reached out to me to ask if I ever heard of an airline changing a booked ticket to a standby ticket. The background was my friend bought a basic economy ticket on Air Canada and when he went to check in they gave him the option to purchase a seat for $65 or to receive a standby ticket. As the flight was fully booked, he purchased the seat. He was furious with the idea that the airline would try to force him to pay up to ensure that he was on that flight.

I spent a little time researching it and found that this is not out of the ordinary. Airlines change booked seats to standby for a couple of reasons. The first one is that at check in time, they may not have an available seat for the basic economy ticket. When you buy a basic economy ticket you are booking the flight and awaiting a seat assignment (among other limitations like the ticket is not changeable). With a potential shortage of seats, airline will issue you a standby ticket. What then happens?

If an airline overbooks a flight, they will issue upgrades first for booked and seated passengers. The airline will then assign these recently vacated seats to those with the standby tickets. If there are still passengers without seat assignments, airlines can pursue a couple of different options.

First, they can ask for volunteers to change their flights along with some compensation like a voucher or cash. This usually addresses the issue and the standby passengers will get the seat. If however, they do not get enough voluntary passengers to rebook their flights, the airline may involuntarily bump passengers. They usually take into account fare rates and airline status. Basic Economy passengers will be at the top of the list for people to be bumped. The airline should compensate you for this action.

There is another option for some airlines. If they change you status to a standby passenger and the flight is booked, they may say that you are entitled to any compensation as a standby passenger. The airline will just add you as a standby passenger to their next flight to your destination. This action will greatly annoy the passenger and create a publicity issue for them. For airlines like Air Canada, they will not care, they already have so many issues with their passengers that the Canada Transportation Authority proposed a new rule that will impose a $790 bill for any customer complaint that it has to resolve. While this rule is not in place yet, the need for it is since the Canada Transportation Authority has 71,000 customer complaints on its docket. That seems like a big number.

My take is that you have to consider the implications if you buy a basic economy ticket. Airlines, unfortunately, do not treat their passengers well in normal instances. When a problem occurs, the airlines will not offer much help, if any, to the basic economy customers.

A few years back, my flight was cancelled from Nashville to New York, the lowest fare customers were delayed in Nashville for 3 days before they could rebook them while the preferred customers were booked the next day. Now, Nashville is a great town and I had an amazing time there, I would not be happy if I was forced to stay for an additional 3 days. Just to reinforce, when booking a ticket, do not just think of the ticket price but also consider if anything bad happens!!