Do you have as much flexibility with legacy carriers as you do with say, Airtran/SW?

[Minnesota!]

We are going to be booking airfare very soon for October. We have been spoiled by Airtran in that they are very flexible when a flight time or price drop happens...I know 1 phone call will get things resolved.

However, there are NO good flight times for us on Airtran, and SW is incredibly expensive. I can get a good flight time, for a little more than AT on a legacy carrier. But, not knowing about flexibility is scaring me!!

So...experiences? If I were to book on say, United, and the "good flight time" that I booked is changed...what can I do? Or if the price drops...do they do credits?

Thanks!!

 

[Jestocost]

We are going to be booking airfare very soon for October. We have been spoiled by Airtran in that they are very flexible when a flight time or price drop happens...I know 1 phone call will get things resolved.

However, there are NO good flight times for us on Airtran, and SW is incredibly expensive. I can get a good flight time, for a little more than AT on a legacy carrier. But, not knowing about flexibility is scaring me!!

So...experiences? If I were to book on say, United, and the "good flight time" that I booked is changed...what can I do? Or if the price drops...do they do credits?

Thanks!!

The legacy carriers are absolutely inflexible as far as changes go. They will allow you to change and rebook, but will charge a fee of generally $150 to do so. As a result, unless your price drops by more than $150--which is pretty unlikely--then there's no benefit to doing the change. Even more fun is if you have to change and the price has gone up; then you have to pay the higher fare PLUS the $150 change fee. The only way to avoide this is to book one of their fully refundable fares, and if you think SWA's prices are high you probably aren't going to like what you find there. Consider also that the legacy carriers are going to charge at least $25 each way to check one bag.

Pretty much the only time the legacy carriers will allow a "free" change or a refund on a discounted ticket is if they have changed the routing or the flight time substantially. Then, of course, your ability to change is dependent on if there are any other options available that work out better for you.

 

[GrnMtnMan]

Pretty much the only time the legacy carriers will allow a "free" change or a refund on a discounted ticket is if they have changed the routing or the flight time substantially. Then, of course, your ability to change is dependent on if there are any other options available that work out better for you.

But this is also one of the benefits of a legacy: they usually have more flights. And my experience has been that if they make the change, they are pretty accommodating with putting you on YOUR preferred flight.

I've seen the stories on the boards when people are upset when their flight time changes, and they lose a day at the parks because of the change....like AiTran only has one option a day for getting you from MCO to MSP.

But a bigger legacy will have 10+ options per day (with connections). And though your travel time will be longer, you don't necessarily lose vacation time.

So I'm not necessarily endorsing only going with legacies....their inflexibility and love of nickel-and-diming-you any chance they get is pretty lousy. But their is an upside to them: frequency of flights can insure you against changes killing some of your vacation time. Just make sure you choose one that has lots of flights for you.

 

[Jestocost]

But this is also one of the benefits of a legacy: they usually have more flights. And my experience has been that if they make the change, they are pretty accommodating with putting you on YOUR preferred flight.

I've seen the stories on the boards when people are upset when their flight time changes, and they lose a day at the parks because of the change....like AiTran only has one option a day for getting you from MCO to MSP.

But a bigger legacy will have 10+ options per day (with connections). And though your travel time will be longer, you don't necessarily lose vacation time.

So I'm not necessarily endorsing only going with legacies....their inflexibility and love of nickel-and-diming-you any chance they get is pretty lousy. But their is an upside to them: frequency of flights can insure you against changes killing some of your vacation time. Just make sure you choose one that has lots of flights for you.

In DC that's probably true about the legacies and it's certainly true in their hub cities, but here in St. Louis American is down from 400 departures a day in 2004 to closer to 30. Delta maybe has close to that and the rest of the legacies much fewer. All but a very few of those flights are simply shuttles to DFW, ORD, MSP, ATL or some other hub city. SWA has more than twice as many as the next largest carrier and is the only airline with multiple daily non-stop flights to MCO. I suspect that many second- and third-tier airports are in similar positions.

I'm not saying that the legacy carriers are bad--there are many things about them that I like better than SWA--but flexibility in accomodating changes clearly is not one of their strong suits.