I bought a cheap one-way ticket a while back to visit some family in CA next weekend; $127.80 out of my own pocket. I just found out my work schedule has changed for next week and now I will be flying to CA on a company paid ticket, since I'll be coming from a customer site and not from home. Totally ok with me since I still get the weekend with my family and I get another billable week this month.

Since the $127.80 ticket is less than the $150 change fee, I will likely just end up throwing the ticket away. I've been traveling for work for quite a while and frequent travel changes just come with the job. I've thrown many tickets away over the year and I will not lose sleep over the $127.80. Money is money though, and I have been racking my brain on how to not completely lose the entire value of this ticket.

My question to all the crafty Delta frequent flyers out there is: Has anyone come up with a creative way to get any residual value from a ticket that costs less than the change fee? Perhaps a little known DL loophole of some kind? I am a DM, so maybe a creative use of a Medallion benefit? Has anyone gotten a really understanding phone agent that waived the fee or something similar?

The only thing I have come up with is hoping for bad weather or an operational problem. I am going to hold on to the ticket until the very last minute, and hope there is a storm or something that would cause something about my routing to qualify for a waived change fee, or on the day of departure there are irregular ops that would allow me to cancel the ticket sans fees. These are obviously long shots though.