Should one ask for extra assistance from gate agents and other airline employees for a non-revenue passenger who is over 80 years old and hard-of-hearing?
The 80-year-old would be traveling by herself, and we were wondering whether it would be better for her to pay full fare or to save a considerable amount of money by flying standby as the parent of a back office airline employee, but on a different airline. She has flown many times, the most recent only a year ago, but never standby.
I've been unable to find anything on this topic after hours of searching, although I did find this tip of concern: "Be sure to sit close to the gate and listen for your name to be called. If you don’t approach the podium in a timely manner, the gate agent will call the next standby passenger on the list." (Source) She would likely not hear any announcements, but would need to have someone personally tap her on the shoulder.
The training material for using the standby benefit talks a lot about the employee with the benefit being the sole point of contact and having their dependents behave respectfully to airline employees, implying we should not burden them as they are busy doing their jobs for paying passengers, which I agree with, but it says nothing about how much to lean on them for the kind of assistance they would ordinarily give an elderly paying passenger.
