Unlimited standby flights are back with conditions -

Looking back, it is one of those inflight phenomena – like free cigars on Concorde or unrestricted flight-deck visits – that seems scarcely conceivable.

- SIMON CALDER

During the 1990s, the US standby airpass allowed unlimited flights for a month anywhere on the Delta domestic network. Even better, Northwest Orient (now part of Delta) took you around America and gave access to a string of Canadian cities on a shoestring.

The upfront cost was a substantial investment, in those days: typically $499. But the benefits kept coming: besides the opportunity to explore new cities and regions, meals were standard on most flights. And if you had no particular place to go, at nightfall you could aim for three seats on an eastbound transcontinental flight from Los Angles or San Francisco to Delta’s galactic HQ in Atlanta or Memphis – where Northwest had a huge hub for many years.

Turn up, show your ticket and step on board was the order of the day. On the odd occasion when everything was full, such as a busy holiday weekend from Atlanta to Chicago, the ground staff would go out of their way to find an out-of-the-way aviation avenue to your final destination – usually involving a change of plane in Cincinnati.