I'm flying to LA this weekend. I bought my ticket ages ago and it was roughly $100. I bought it from cheaptickets.com
I really want to fly out at an earlier time. I looked into changing my ticket, but it's a MINIMUM fee of $125 (which is ridiculous, because the ticket itself was $100).
If I just go to the airport early, will they put me on an earlier flight? or is that risky?
You could probably fly standby on the earlier flight. Maybe call the airline before hand to see how the earlier flights look (if they are overbooked, etc).
It might work out, but I usually haven't had very good luck trying to do that myself. It depends on how full the earlier flights are, so calling ahead like jettie suggests might be a good idea.
I've done this and it worked out. If you are leaving from a smaller airport, make sure you research and know when the next earilest flight is.. otherwise you will get their early and there might not be anything else open.
Oh.. and you still have to pay money to get your ticket changed, even if you wait until you get there. Maybe not $100 but I think I had to pay at least $50 extra to change my ticket the last time.
yeah most of the airlines charge $100+ to change tickets...it's rediculous. Once I called them like 2 hours after booking the flight and they still said I would have to pay that. Your best bet is to try and get on standby, but it's not guaranteed. Some airlines (I'm pretty sure US Air does it) actually charges you to go on standby...usually like $25 or so.