Advice on solo United nonrev (standby) travel from Colorado to Japan last week of March?
Hey there, /r/solotravel!
I am planning a two week trip, alone, to Japan, flying from DEN to NRT on March 24th and coming back on April 9th. In order to make the best use of my time, I chose the non-stop United 143 & United 142 respective outbound and return flights (about $1900).
However, I have an awesome family member that works for United and offered to add me to his buddy list for this flight, which would make the flight about 80% cheaper. This would be a huge savings, but at a risk. For those who don't know, flying on a buddy pass is referred to as a non-revenue ticket or "nonrev", meaning the airline doesn't make a profit on it. On a nonrev you fly standby, so there isn't a guarantee that you will have a seat the moment the plane boards. But if there are available seats, any standby passengers get any remaining available seats.
So my question to you all is whether or not I should take the risk of flying standby for the crazy discount. I'm trying to factor in the following:
I'm not flying over a holiday or major festival, even though it seems to be the peak of cherry blossom season and coincides with spring break.
I don't have a hotel reservation I have to stick to (staying with someone I know).
The price of a guaranteed ticket will obviously go up the longer I wait to purchase it, if that's the route I take. For the next few weeks the price shouldn't change, though.
The nonrev ticket price shouldn't change at all, even up until day-of and I don't pay for the ticket if I don't get on the plane.
When I got the offer a week or so ago, I checked on a comparable flight 3 days out on a Saturday and it still had 20+ seats available. If I am really traveling during a not busy time, the same should hold true - this blog post appears to support the idea.
I look forward to any tips from you all here at /r/solotravel!
Submitted November 10, 2017 at 07:39PM by Z3R0faith http://ift.tt/2AAuRL2
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