Well, I thought I'd give an update on my Southwest & ATA standby travels

Thursday (9/1)
Southwest from SDF to PHX went smoothly.

Then ATA from PHX to OGG the first night we couldnt get on. The availability looked poor, & we didnt think we would anyway. Thats ok. It gave us time to catch up w/ an old friend in PHX.


Friday (9/2)
The flight had good availability, but it was delayed 5 hours due to mechanical problems. At this point we felt like we were living in airports.
The flight to OGG was uneventful although we didnt arrive & get our baggage until after 11pm Hawaii time.


Sun (9/11)
Time for the trip home. I called mid-afternoon to check availability. 50 open seats. This is good.
I get to the airport (after checking out of the hotel & turning in the rental car) and they tell me that Saturday's flight had been cancelled due to mechanical problems, and all the people who couldnt get out Sat would be on our plane, which btw was delayed 6 hours. No seats for us.
So we had to scramble to find a rental car at 9pm Sunday night, then go find a hotel room (tried a dozen places before finding one w/ an open room.)

I return to the airport early afternoon on Monday to inquire about seats on that night's flight. The guy at the counter promised me that everything had been worked out, that they brought in another plane to get out the people who were held over from the prev. night, and there were 100 empty seats on the plane.

Good.
Oh . ......well, except that that guy was full of crap.
WE got there 4 hours before the flight & they "accomidated" us. They went ahead & assigned our seats, which was good, because the plane was subsequently filled w/people who did not take the prev. night's flight.
So it worked out, but the misinformation was frustrating.
Wonderfully [note heavy sarcasm], on our (red-eye)flight back, an old lady was seated beside us who left her reading light on for the ENTIRE flight. Needless to say we didnt get much sleep on that flight, and if I wasnt a nonrev, I would've . . . . turned it off for her.

The flight back from PHX to SDF on Southwest went off w/out a hitch, and we finally made it home Tuesday afternoon.