A silver lining for the pandemic is the introduction of airline change free policy.
With this new flexibility, you can change or cancel your flight on most major US airlines without the annoying $200 (or more) fee.
You still risk an additional fare difference if you change to a more expensive ticket, but you don’t need to worry about a separate change fee other than the possible fare difference, as long as you don’t book in advance One Basic economy class ticket.
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On the other hand, if you switch to a cheaper fare, you will usually get credit for the price difference. In fact, this can be a great way to ensure that you get the lowest fares for your upcoming flights.
If you notice that an upcoming flight is on sale, many major US airlines allow you to call and request a re-price of your ticket at the current (lower) selling price. Once done, you’ll typically receive a future travel voucher to use within a year of the difference in price.
On Monday, however, American Airlines took a big step toward curbing this behavior, especially for power users. Fort Worth-based carrier just updated conditions of the contract of carriage regulates all travel within the United States to prohibit “automatic re-shopping” done by “you or your agent or through an authorized third party.”
When defining “automatic redemption”, American writes that this method is “the use of an automated or robotic process to rebook the same passenger and journey on American for the purpose of taking advantage of the fare reduced when there are no change fees payable to Americans for the administrative costs of rebooking.”
While some professional flyers may be able to write their own computer programs to automate this process, a number of online travel agents have recently integrated this type of automatic rebooking feature into the system. their toolkit and I’m sure others are planning on such integrations in the future.
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For example, Itilit is a corporate travel agent that offers a “return flight price” guarantee that automatically rebooking the same flight for a cheaper price when the price drops.
With the updated shipping conditions for Americans, Itilite’s feature appears to be considered a prohibited booking practice, which could result in ticket cancellation, refusal of carriage, and charge of difference in price. tickets and other penalties imposed by Americans its website.
In a statement, American confirmed that this policy update has been shared with both travel agencies and customers.
“On May 1, we updated our agreements with our managing travel agent, which included a provision prohibiting automatic redemption. With that change, we’ve updated it. Its shipping conditions to match GTAA,” American told TPG.
I personally track the prices of my upcoming flights manually using Google Flights. The search giant’s saved flights feature will email me whenever the fare of a tracked flight changes.
When that happens, I usually call the airline to rebook the flight and get a credit. (Unless you book a refundable ticket, you will only receive a future travel coupon as part of this process.)
Americans still seem to allow this kind of behavior – it’s just automatic rebooking that the airline controls (for now).
It will be interesting to see how these policies evolve, especially as most fee announcements change. marketing is “permanent.”
Are US airlines losing revenue from savvy passengers who constantly rebook flights to take advantage of lower fares? It’s certainly possible, and it’s entirely something United seem to have been worried about after reducing their own change fees.
From the start of the pandemic, United had a reputation for not offering vouchers when switching to cheaper fares. That changed in April 2021 when the Chicago-based carrier back to this important issue.
That said, United are still keeping an eye on system game players, as their recently updated shipping contract now Forbid visitors to book in advance Flight was delayed just to claim compensation. (The airline has also made changes to its erroneous fare policy.)
