Originally Posted by
robyng
I suspect if one had a true emergency cancellation (like for heart surgery) - and not just a heck of it cancellation
You certainly can try. Just dont have high expectation for airlines are certainly not charities.
BA as far as I know, is not yielding on its rule of no change at T-24 on the
first flight - there are enough sob stories reported from the first round of 100K BA card bonus in Nov 2009 to Mar 2010.
One story is, a guy has used his BA miles to fly his parents from Asia to US for a visit. The father developed heart problem during their stay in US. Even with doctor's note about heart surgery scheduled a few days before the return flight, BA would not allow change because the passengers had already flew the outbound flights. The poster ended up booking a one-way AA award to fly his parents home because one-way pay tickets were too expensive and their BA tickets became useless due to the father could not possible take the original return flight.
It is incidents / emergencies like the above, that it is highly advisable to book BA award as 2 one-ways instead of a r/t even though it may mean 2 x phone ticketing fee and 2 x cancellation fee in case you need to cancel but you preserve the flexibility of the return leg - could be a very important factor. Things happen and you do not want to get stuck without shelling out big money for the alternative(s). Buying travel insurance would not solve this issue because travel insurance would only cover the change fee on award ticket - in this case, the ticket is not even changeable.
Another story is, a guy cut his connection flight too close to position himself to take the CX flight from JFK to HKG. Well, his position flight delayed and caused him to miss the CX flight. There was another CX flight after that but BA said No Way - no change was allowed after T-24. He literally posted that he saw his flight turned to pumpkin....
Good luck to trust DL management would do the right thing when emergencies arise...
Originally Posted by
robyng
Anyway - although I don't deal with Delta very often - I like to give the vendors I deal with the benefit of the doubt. That they will do the right thing by me. Until they prove otherwise.
I think I am now utterly confused - isn't it you keep saying to everyone on the forum that you only flies DL now due to your location? That you dont mind paying the high miles cost on DL because you "always" find availability while you could not find any on AA or UA or whoever?
Good luck to trust DL management which announces MAJOR Change that even their own elites are negatively impacted (and being used as scapegoat for the change), without any advance warning and goes in effect immediately... and RETROACTIVELY! Not sure what other proof you still need... but to each their own...