Ladies and gentlemen. I recently took a 20 day trip to Korea. That is not what I am here to talk about. What I am here to talk about is the perils of flying standby. My father works for an airline. As such I have flight privileges and can fly for free when ever I want as long as there are extra seats. It’s pretty nice and it works out most of the time. Flying to Korea in this current climate is not incredibly easy. Inside spoiler is a more detailed explanation. [spoiler] The airline my dad works for only operates one flight a day to Korea from the airport in my state. That’s not that big of a deal because under normal circumstances, there are two international airports near Seoul that supports transpacific flights but right now the government is only allowing incheon to operate. So there are limited ways in and out of the country and culturally, Koreans love to travel so most of the seats going in and out are filled with Koreans so there is not much room for other people. Also the Korean government has made it substantially easier for people to travel in and out of the country as far as covid goes.[/spoiler] after trying for two days I got out to Korea on a business class seat because someone paid for it and didn’t show up. Very nice. Champagne and lay flat seats. On the way back it was a little trickier. I had an opportunity to fly to Seattle instead of the airport in my state and pretty much get a guaranteed seat but I didn’t want to take it because I would have had to either clear customs in Seattle, recheck my bags, and get on the flight home in under an hour and a half or I’d have to wait about 8 hours for the red eye. So I elected to stay another day in Korea and try the direct flight home the next day. Here is where I pause for an important note. Commercial airplanes are not designed to operate at full capacity with fuel and cargo because of the very pricey nature of flying. When flying great distances with passengers and bags, there is a concept known as payload optimization, basically they can’t fill every seat in the plane otherwise it would weigh too much with the fuel and such and they wouldn’t make it back. This flight was likely to be optimized Also there was a standby senior to me so he’d get on before me. they also elected to hold the standby passengers in incheon at the ticket counter rather than the gate like they do in the US. So I’m sitting near the counter and the ticketing agent comes up and announces that there are no standbys allowed on the flight. At this moment I am sent into a point of extreme crisis because there was no flights with any seats available for me to get on for nearly a week. So I’m sitting there looking for a hotel in a panic and the ticket agent walks up to me, says “ Mr. Valentino?” I confirmed who I was, she said, come with me took my bags, dropped them at the counter and told me to run. She ran with me to the front of the wheelchair line in security, handed me a ticket, told me that I had 15 minutes to get to the gate and to not stop running. I cleared security, with my shoes half on because apparently Koreans have figured out how to use their machinery properly. So I’m sprinting in a duck shuffle as to the gate, stuff everywhere. After getting lost twice, I made it to the gate a sweaty blob. I then glanced down at my ticket to see that I was yet again seated in business class. Apparently another person had not shown up. That ends the story of how I went from sprinting to champagne in under 15 minutes