low fares are non-changeable on carriers now?

[chris1gill]

Has anyone been keeping up with the latest wave of changes from the big airlines? Earlier this week I heard a report that said Delta implemented the same policy as United & American... Basically if you miss your flight, your ticket is completely worthless, you must buy a new ticket to wherever you were going for the gate price? And, either the tickets cannot be changeable at all or you have to pay 100 per ticket?

Does anyone know anything about these changes? This is just what I heard in a quick news blip...

If this is the case, I have to seriously think about driving for our future trips... we've done it once, it wasn't so bad, we rather liked it... As far as I know Southwest hasn't started with this non-sense have they?

 

[CarolA]

They have implemented this on the cheaper fares for Delta, AA, CO, United and USAir. You can change your ticket for $100, but you MUST do it prior to the Date (or time) of departure. Yes, if you miss your plane you are STUCK! Also, you must pay $100 to attempt to fly standby on an earlier flight.


SW has not implemented this and I don't think they will. SW does have a strict Standby policy which pretty much makes it impossible to fly standby.

 

[chris1gill]

Carol, I'm wondering how this will affect your travel plans or other families travel plans? I'm seriously thinking that the only airline I will fly is SWA & if I can't fly SWA I'll drive.... Boston to Orlando is a nice drive... if it's to the West Coast though, I'm thinking I will book pretty close to my flight date to be sure of my dates... This whole policy makes it pretty unlikely we will fly other carriers other than SWA... at least for travel in the continental US.. long haul flights we'll still wait to close to our dates

 

[ncligs]

IMO I don't think what the airlines are doing is that bad,all they are doing is if you plan on not being on the flight, call them ahead of time and let them know. If you bought tickets for a baseball game or Broadway play and didn't make, do you get to go to the next game or play with no charge??
The only thing I don't agree with is the $100 fee for flying stand by on the day of your original flight, if there are empty seats on the plane, why are they charging me $100.

If I have a choice to fly or drive 18 hours,I will always fly. I have never missed a flight in 20 yrs. You plan ahead and leave enough time in case of traffic,weather,etc.In cases of death,sickness,etc you have no control over that. But for $100 I would still fly.

 

[Music Mole]

I have booked (and changed!) air travel for multiple business travellers for several years. When I first read the terms of AA's new policy I was a little freaked - until I read it again. Really every time one of my traveller's wasn't going to be able to make a sceduled trip, we knew in advance and were able to call and cancel. I would say most folks probably fall in the same category. For those folks, who have always cancelled prior to scheduled dparture, there wont be a noticeable difference. I had to call Friday AM tp cancel a Friday PM flight, and there were no problems - the credit of the ticket purchase price is good for 1 year from the date of purchase (subject to a $100 change fee + fare difference if the same fare class is not available).

My travellers are most likely to be impacted by the standby charge, and I agree with other posters that that seems a littl extreme.

 

[CarolA]

I am not sure how this will affect my travel! I can say that from a business travel point of view I find the changes on standby frustrating.

I am a business traveler and unlike Music Mole's organized travelers, I have missed flights home due to late meetings etc. Generally, we "think" we are going to make it and just don't! In that case we would be STUCK whereever we are. As I read these policies I can't determine what the airlines are going to do to me even if I call since I have already used half of the ticket!

However, for my personal travel I normally have a choice and depending on what the airlines do on frequent flyer miles, my choice may be SW a LOT more now! They are just so much easier to deal with on changes.

 

[chris1gill]

My concern, is that I generally buy our tickets for 150.00/rt or less, coming out of Boston... If we need to change our tickets we need to fork over FOUR HUNDRED dollars plus the change in fare to do so, this just isn't feasible for us... it doesn't make financial sense to book early & really HOPE we can stick by the dates, we usually do, but I won't book the airfare counting on it now.... I'll book a month before or we'll drive... As for what they'll do if you are already at your location & need to re-schedule your return, I'd hope they'd let you do so & only charge you a hundred per ticket to do so... God forbid you miss your flight, because you are STUCK with nothing... you'll need to re-purchase a ticket to come home... I hope SWA doesn't implement this round of changes... from now on we'll stick with them anyways...