[shadowflit]

Wow. I missed a Delta flight in SF (that while I'll blame the PA system for anyone who listens, was entirely my own fault), and I ended up first on the standby list. I always got the impression agents put people who miss their flights pretty high on the priority list, as opposed to people who just feel like going standby.

Weird that treatment would be so different across airlines.

[jonkelly]

It depends. Airlines distinguish on their waitlists between those who've been inconvenienced entirely outside their control (aircraft mechanical delay even weather) vs. those who've missed their flights because they were late. Sounds like you got lucky and were listed as the former. Sounds like the blog author was the former but was classified as the latter. Neither mis-classification is rare from what I've seen as a very frequent traveler.