[jimmiefoxx850]

Our international flight was delayed and we arrived at SF 5 hours late, so my wife and I missed the 13:30 flight. The person at the ticket counter said she didn't have other options for us, she could only put us on standby list for 10pm flight and we had to go to the gate to see how things went.

So we arrived the departing gate before 8pm and saw our names were on the top 2 of the standby list. Then we saw some other standby people talked to the gate agent inquiring about their chance of getting on. There're too many inquiring thus the agent had to announce that "people on the standby list please do not ask about your status, we will call your name. And don't worry, even though it's apretty crowded plane but we will get you on board". We didn't ask about our chance then.

However, when the flight finally started boarding at 22:30, the screen stopped showing the standby list and we saw a few people arguing about their status again. Even there's one young girl complaining that she should be on board while agent told her "You didn't have the ticket". Some of them were later granted boarding passes before us. Then when one of the agents calling "gate is closing" we saw 2 "standby" people (one Japanese business person and one college youth who made phone to his mother about may not be able to get to the plane, those two previously asked their status despite agents said they should not to) rushed to the gate and were given boarding passes(the lady on the gate even didn't bother to check their ID). Then we saw that girl kept complaining to the agent, and the agent just printed another board pass to her and said "that's your pass,you want to take this plane or not?"

And the door was closed. We figured out that while being on top of the standby listwe were the only two people at the gate who didn't get on the plane!

I went to ask about this, and that lady simply told me "Those 3 are flight attendants". All of a sudden that plane has 1 Japanese business guy, 1 college kid, and 1 complaining girl as flight attendants!

On the next morning when we got to the gate again, we found out that all other people after us on the standby list for previous night were all gone.

So, we lost the appointments the next day and lost more than $600 because we were too kind to the gate agents. We let them to do their thing and not bothering them like everybody else. It looked like those people on the gate for that night flight were just trying to go home. So they didn't bother to go through the routine standby list thing and chose to give the boarding pass to whoever asking for it.