YSK that if you have a flight booked, and they put you on standby for another flight, they might cancel your original flight. Edit: by cancel your original flight, I mean cancel your original ticket Edit 2 since there is a lot of controversy: I will try to be as specific as possible at to exactly what happened. I’m not saying it will always happen, but please be aware. *I had a flight. This flight was canceled. I then bought a ticket for the next open flight which was much later. I paid full price for this ticket. I got to the gate agent who suggested I go on standby for the next flight which was in a few hours. I accepted. Once I got there, the flight was full and I couldn’t get on. I went to speak to the gate agent and informed them that I had a flight booked for later that day and asked for a printout of my boarding pass. I was told that my spot on that flight that I had just booked hours before was forfeited when I went on standby and it was bought by someone else and was no longer available. Maybe this is obvious to everyone. But I was left with no flight booked and I really don’t want someone else to make my mistake. Maybe most of the time it won’t happen, but it happened to me so just ask and ensure that it won’t.* Why YSK: This is good to know with all the commotion going on with flights right now. Don’t take the standby chance if you have a ticket that they could cancel. It is very possible someone else will book your original flight before it rolls around to you on standby. At the very least, you should ask the agent if the standby will cancel your original ticket. You would be left with no ticket and just continue to roll onto the next standby until there is a flight with availability at boarding. This may take a while because if all the cancellations Source, me who got my REBOOKED ticket canceled because the agent offered standby on an earlier flight after my first flight was canceled. Also yes it’s smart not to fly right now, but this is for people who choose to do so. :)