donttravelmuch

Hello everyone! I’m a first timer here and really don’t travel too often. I made the boo boo of booking a flight for my 18 year old and I too quickly without insurance. Basically what it boils down to is we need to fly out one day later than originally booked. I’m trying to avoid the $300 ($150 per person) flight change fee as much as possible. I called American Airlines and they won’t budge. I’d be happy with a discounted change rate fee. Not sure if there are options.

I’m hoping that some of you “expert” travelers can offer some advice on how to work around this? Do any of you have any miracle tips for me?

Thanks in advance!!!

maize&blue

Your options are pretty limited. You can hang on to the tickets and hope there is a significant schedule change, at which point you could request a full refund. If you don't need the funds right away, you could even hang onto them until the day of travel and hope for weather/mechanical delays, which could also entitle you to a refund.

choijw

one is also obligated to pay the fare difference if the fare on the next day is higher. so waiting until the last minute might not be the best idea.

donttravelmuch

Thanks for the input. I'm not trying for a refund though? I was hoping to change my flight to come back one day later without having to pay a change flight fee. Is there anything I can do? Any tricks out there?

Often1

You have not provided any details other than that you are on AA. $150 is AA's standard change fee for non-changeable tickets. Insurance would not likely cover a situation where you want to make a voluntary change. There is no end-around.

If you wait and the fare changes for the new flight (presumably upwards) you will pay both the change fee of $300 (twice $150) and the fare difference. The latter may be a whole lot more than $300, depending on when and where you are flying. I would not wait.

I am presuming that the new tickets will cost more than $150 each.

cblaisd

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Since this is a question about American Airlines, I will move from Travel Tools to that forum where the friendly experts there can give you the most assistance.

cblaisd
Senior Moderator

JDiver

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

I think Often1 has summarized some good information for you. But none of us have any "miracle tips" for you, as there are none.

I'd read the thread on Same Day Confirmed Flight Change and see if it might offer some assistance - you must depart within 12 hours, the fee is half the change fee, there must be availability, etc.

Extensive information can also be found in this Forum via the FAQ with information in the Wiki as well. You'll see there are some good tools to use here.

Here's the deal: we can save significant money with the lowest, most restricted fare over the more expensive, less restricted fares, but... they are more restricted.

brp

Basically this. If the change fees were avoidable in exactly the situations that they were put in place to address (someone who books a cheap flight and then wants to change it) they wouldn't be of much value to the airline.

You can hope for a substantial schedule change. Short of that, there aren't a whole lot of options.

Cheers.

Xero

All a chance fee does is cancels the flight and gives you credit to use the money paid on a future AA flight within one year provided it is for the same person, less $150.

So it might be beneficial to look at other airlines too if they are significantly cheaper and use your AA tickets on some other flight within a year.

mvoight

Not really options.
As noted, if AA changes the schedule, you might be able to request a change to the next day. As noted by someone else, insurance would not have covered this You have at least 24 hours to hold a booking before purchase. This is normally enough time to verify the time/dates are what you really want.

You can make the change now and pay $150, assuming the same fare is available or you can wait until later and possible pay more. Of course, it is also possible traveling a day later is a lower fare, so that would be helpful.

I will point out the fee is common among US carriers. Southwest doesn't charge a change fee, but will charge whatever fare is available. Maybe not important in your cases, but it certainly is for people that want to do standby.

SkiUtah

sorry you are hearing this after you book but travel 101 is if theres a good chance you will need to change your dates then southwest is the much safer bet. I am not sure if southwest serves your destination and origin but they dont charge change fees and has much lower last minute fares in general. also baggage is free on southwest so thats another plus on longer trips.

insurance would not have helped you in this scenario. the insurance is meant if you miss a flight connection due to bad weather, illness, airline looses your luggage etc not because you decided you want different dates

there are no tricks or miracles going to happen here in this scenario that will benefit you. For the most frequent travellers they get discounts or the ability to change for less or free but you need to fly alot on the same airline to get this benefit on airlines besides southwest.

Often1

None of the other options: 1) SDC; 2) wait to see if there's a schedule change, are helpful to OP's problem. OP needs to change the date.

Both of the other options presume that at some point down the road, there will be capacity on another flight the next day. That's risky these days.

If OP really needs to change the date, best to it now and suck up the loss.

gemac

Of course, if anyone could avoid change fees by registering here and asking how to do it, AA would have a tough time selling tickets without change fees for so much more than restricted tickets. There isn't any practical way that I know of to avoid the change fees in your situation. If it is worth it to you to pay the extra fee to return later, I would suggest making that change as soon as possible.

In the future, it is best to make sure you have the dates you want before purchasing tickets. Of course, things do change and sometimes you will need to make changes after ticketing. This is one of those risks in life that we can either insure (in this case by buying tickets without change penalties) or self-insure. If we choose to self-insure, we do so knowing that we are paying whenever the incident occurs, rather than every time it could occur. When it occurs, we should just recognize it as an occurrence of a self-insured risk, and go on with life.

JDiver

Unless the OP has sufficient flexibility to fly later in the day - he hasn't disclosed that to us, so those are options, though you are fairly correct, they might not be available to the OP.

And yes, flights are filling up now that AA has removed a number of aircraft from service and increased the number of passengers on each flight.

.

Platinum4life

The OP did not mention that this was a discounted fare. It may not be. I would do what we all do...on occasion - call back and ask a different agent if they are willing to waive the change fee. If that doesn't work, ask to speak to a supervisor and plead your case. Supervisors have been known to be cAAring and forgiving to mistakes on occasion.