I motioned the quiet little Asian man sitting to my right to open the window so I could get a good look at the Washington landscape. I was a first timer. The flight was two movies long and my ass was starting to really cramp up. The middle seat wasn’t helping matters.

I’m taking a flight to Seattle that cost me $102.50. Sounds good right? I’d probably wonder what the catch was. The catch is I’m the friend of a Continental pilot and I’m flying standby. I really have no idea what that entails but I would soon find out.

My pilot buddy Davin and I meet up at the Seattle airport, rent a Subaru Forester and make our way to explore Washington State. This trip is only going to be two days and it requires that we make an 11:30pm red eye flight back to Houston the next night. We make our way through Washington and down into Oregon the first day then back up to Seattle on the second. The Pacific Northwest is beautiful this time of year. I needed to be home by 9am the next morning to stay with the kids while my wife goes to work. We check the status of the flight at the airport. It’s now 10pm in Seattle the night before I need to be home. The flight has filled up and we are not looking good. The thing with standby is you have no idea if you’re going to be able to get on the flight. Davin assured me that the 38 seats still available for the flight 3 days prior would not be filled and we were golden. That is until we checked again the night before and it proved him dead wrong.

I’m tired and nervous as the terminal fills with men, women and children. The first class is called to board. Various rows of passengers are called and start piling into the plane. We wait. And wait. We’re sitting at position 3 and 4 on standby. The first standby passenger is called. We wait. The second standby is called. We wait. Five more passengers are called. What? We wait. Finally my name is called. “Yes!” I get to the desk and the small blonde lady asks if I would like first class. “Why yes, I would like that very much”. Davin and I board the plane giggling like two teens about to get on a roller coaster ride. We get in our seats and high five.

We made it back to Houston at 5:45am. I slept almost the entire flight in my giant comfy leather seat. First class is awesome. Especially when it’s only $102.50.

Posted on Sep 20, 2009 & filed under Travel, personal

Tags: airplane, continental, davin, first class, flight, standby