What is advance standby?
Advance standby supports customers, including commercial customers, who have last-minute, urgent or emergency travel needs and who meet one of the criteria below. At the same time, it also helps improve how we use deck space on our ferries.
Customers must meet one of the following criteria to use the advance standby.
You must be:
- A vehicle carrying time-critical food or shellfish.
- An emergency response, medical and military vehicle.
- A customer with an urgent medical appointment (excluding where NHS protocol applies).
- A customer who is sadly experiencing close family critical Illness, death or a funeral.
- Accompanying an animal that needs to attend an urgent vet appointment.
- A customer with a vehicle booking impacted by service disruption.
- Part of Caledonian MacBrayne operations where critical travel is required during incident management.
- A customer with confirmed accommodation bookings on the island (proof must be given).
- An offshore worker returning home.
- A council response vehicle undertaking one of the following tasks - replacement/additional gritting vehicles (only in times of inclement weather), landslip repairs, burials, social care requirements (emergency/urgent appointments) and education requirements (supply teachers travelling to and from school).
We will apply criteria on a case-by-case basis, and the evidence we may ask for depends on the situation. We do reserve the right to verify whether you meet the criteria, if required.
If you meet the criteria above, this is how advance standby is arranged:
- If you meet one of the criteria above, and you don’t have a booking in place, but need to travel on an urgent basis, you can request to join the advance standby list for a sailing.
- You can do this by contacting the port of departure – where our team will place you in the advance standby list. We’ll take payment for your intended travel.
- Our teams can only add you to the advance standby list up to 12 hours before travel.
- Between the time of your booking and up to 12 hours prior to the sailing - your place will be confirmed if space is available, or your payment refunded automatically because no space was available.
If you don’t meet the criteria or your advance standby reservation was not confirmed – you can join the ‘standby’ queue at the port. This is on a first come first served basis of arrival at the port. There is no guarantee of travel, and it is subject to deck space availability.
Advance standby is not available on some sailings where a deck space reservation pilot is in operation. We’ve shared more on the routes in our FAQ where advance standby is not available.
A summary of the advance standby and standby options are:
Advance standby
Advance standby is where upon meeting the criteria up to 12 hours before your required sailing, you pay for advance standby travel, and 12 hours prior to the sailing – your place will be confirmed if space is available, or your payment refunded because no space was available.
Standby
Standby is where a customer turns up at the port on the day of travel and joins the standby queue if they:
- don’t have a pre-booked ticket;
- have a pre-booked ticket but have arrived after the latest check-in time;
- don’t meet the criteria for advance standby or;
- have been unable to have an advance standby request confirmed.
The standby queue at the port is managed on a first come, first served basis, and subject to deck space availability.
The standby queue is not open to motorhomes, campervans and those vehicles towing a caravan - with the exception of island residents. We've shared more details in our motorhome and campervan FAQ.
This differs from advance standby which is outlined above.