I recently bought plane tickets for my son and I to go to Austin, Texas for a video game tournament. After some discussion the next day, we purchased two more tickets for my wife and daughter to make it a short get away for the entire family. We were scheduled to fly out Friday morning, and get home late Sunday night. As my wife and I discussed the logistics of the trip, she realized that with all the tournament activities, we wouldn’t have much time to do things with our son. She regretted not booking the trip to start a day earlier.
Her next action was to call the airline to inquire if we could switch our tickets to the same flight a day earlier. It left at the exact same time, flew the same route, and the seats we had selected for Friday were currently open on Thursday’s flight. The airline representative told her that we could change our flights……….for $200 a piece.
It would cost us $800 to switch our flights to leave a day earlier.
There was no way we were going to pay that much money to extend our trip by one day. After all, that’s just the travel price. We’d also have to add another night’s hotel stay plus food. Over the next few days, my wife had a hard time letting it go. She was constantly beating herself up over not planning the trip better, and suggesting we all go as a family and leave on Thursday from the start.
Never being one to not get her way, she decided to call again.
She asked if there was any way to have the change fee waived.
Answer: No.
She asked if there was any way to have the change fee reduced.
Answer: No.
She asked if fee was negotiable.
Answer: No.
Thinking aloud, my wife mentioned that we wanted to come a day earlier to spend time with our son and it would have also been nice to visit a family member that lives nearby that is going through chemotherapy.
Suddenly the representative’s answer changed. If we were changing our flight due to a medical situation, the airline was willing to waive the change fee. The representative told my wife to get the name of the hospital where her cousin was being treated, as well as it’s phone number and then call the airline again. She did as instructed, and our tickets were successfully changed to one day earlier with no change fee whatsoever.
Because my wife gave a medical situation as a reason, the airline waived the ticket change fee.
While I was happy that we were able to change our flights without paying $800, the airline’s reasoning seemed suspect. My wife did have to supply the hospital name and phone number, but they didn’t ask for a name of the patient so obviously they didn’t want the information for verification purposes. It sounds to me like the ticket change fee IS negotiable, and it’s like any other fee – a person just has to get the right representative, and say the right combination of words to get the fee waived.
Have you ever paid an obscene amount of money to change your airline tickets? Have you ever been able to get the fee waived?
We are going to Florida this Summer and the weekend that we are supposed to fly back my wife’s friend is having her bachelor party in North Carolina. Paying the $200 change fee is actually not even worth it in this case and she’ll most likely just miss the flight home and take a flight to North Carolina from Florida. If they were willing to work with us I think it would be a win-win as they could fill the spot with someone else and we would be able to get everything set up without having to pay for an empty seat.
That would be logical…..unfortunately, airlines are not logical. LOL.
We have not been willing to pay extra to change flights in the past.This is one of the reasons I like flying with Southwest because they don’t charge a change fee.
I’m a Southwest fan as well….but they weren’t an option. Not sure why the change fee is so freaking high.
I know firsthand that under normal circumstances, they will not make any exceptions for this. We were planning a family trip along with our in-laws and there were two weeks that we chose between. A decision was reached and I ordered the ticket, only to find out a few days later that I’d ordered them for the wrong week. The airline was sympathetic but I still ended up paying $300 for my mistake.
Thanks for sharing, Money Beagle…apparently they weren’t sympathetic enough!
I’m glad they waived the change fees for you! This is one reason I really love flying with Southwest Airlines – no change fees or cancellation fees!
That’s the way it SHOULD be…I mean I could see a fee if you’re flying tomorrow or something, but that’s a steep fee!
Wow, I never knew about the medical waiver. That’s pretty cool. I have never got those fee waived, but I rarely change travel plan so it’s not a big deal.
We don’t normally change our plans either…it’s always good to have things set in stone before you go buy tickets – especially with that kind of fee!
Are you actually visiting a family member suffering from chemotherapy? Or is it a lie?
No Lie here, My wife does have a cousin in Austin that has cancer (at a very young age, too….) and is indeed going through chemotherapy.