When free changes make it worthwhile to hunt for lower fares

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If you’ve been following the airline industry at all for the last 6 months, you know that lots of US airlines have made their COVID-19 change and cancellation fee waiver policies permanent for most fare classes:

There are some exceptions to these policies, mainly for itineraries originating outside the United States, but the overall picture is clear: as long as you don’t book Basic Economy or Saver fares, then you can change your itinerary up to departure by paying any positive fare difference. However, the airlines are handling negative fare differences differently:

  • United states “If your new flight costs less, you’ll be able to change for free but will not receive a refund of the fare difference.”

  • Delta states “Notwithstanding any rules or ticketing policies to the contrary, if the newly selected flight is for the same travel dates, for the same origin and destination, and results in a lower ticket price, then the reissued ticket will be deemed issued at the same ticket price as the original ticket (i.e., any fare difference will not be issued in the form of a credit).” This is a little bit confusing since it suggests that if you change the dates, origin, or destination of your flights, then the fare difference will be issued in the form of a credit.

  • American by contrast states they allow “customers to keep the full value of eligible tickets if they change their travel plans prior to their scheduled travel. Although customers will have to pay the fare difference for a new flight, customers will not lose their ticket value if the new flight is less expensive.”

I wasn’t able to find definitive guidance one way or the other on Alaska’s website. But fortunately, back in December I booked a companion fare itinerary that had since radically dropped in price, so I decided to find out.

Alaska’s confused and confusing booking engine

One thing I love about Alaska companion fares is just how much value you can wring out of them. Their extremely generous routing rules mean you can stitch together two or three vacations with a single companion fare.

Back in December, I booked a roughly 3-week vacation in July with stops in California, Oregon, and Montana for a total of $1,792.30: a $1,664.10 primary fare and $128.20 companion fare. When I checked the identical itinerary this week, it had fallen to $1,105.04: a $943.61 primary fare and $161.43 companion fare.

Alaska Airlines offers two methods of changing an existing itinerary: you can change some or all of the flights on the itinerary, or you can cancel the itinerary and do a new search. I immediately encountered two problems: first, neither option allowed me to select the exact same flights I had already booked. This makes a certain amount of epistemological sense (how can you rebook an itinerary onto the exact same flights?).

The more serious problem was that rather than being offered a travel credit of $687.26, I was being asked to pay an additional $33.23.

The site didn’t offer any useful information beyond that, so I knew it was time to call in.

A helpful phone rep (and those 33 mystery dollars)

After a brief hold, I explained the situation to my Alaska phone rep and she immediately understood the situation. She did a search for the exact same flights on the exact same days, and came up with a slightly higher fare difference of $720.49, which she said I’d receive in my travel wallet. Meanwhile, I’d owe the exact same $33.23 in additional taxes that I saw online, which I had to pay by credit card.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she did not see the humor in this situation, and did not see the logic in my proposal to simply use some of my $720 credit to pay the $33 in taxes. She did, however, explain that the $33 was the result of a fee that had been waived through December, 2020, but reimposed January 1, 2021. Since I’d booked my ticket in December, but was repricing it in February, I needed to cough up the difference.

Now that I know where the $33.23 online charge comes from, what I don’t know is whether the online booking engine would have automatically calculated my $720.49 credit and deposited it in my account, or if I would have permanently lost it had I gone ahead rebooking the flights online. This is obviously irrelevant when rebooking flights originally booked after January 1, 2021, but if you’re making changes to flights originally booked in 2020 be prepared to call in to be on the safe side.

Conclusion

The bottom line is, change fees are terrible because all fees are terrible, so anything and everything airlines do to reduce or eliminate them is an unalloyed good. But having said that, not all change fee waivers are made alike, and there’s a big difference between a policy that lets you keep the full value of your tickets and one that merely lets you rebook without paying even more on top of fare differences.

When individual airline policies don’t voluntarily meet your needs, remember you always have the option to watch out for schedule changes and assert your rights, instead.