Originally Posted by
yohanson
Not any more! Credits for non-refundable tickets purchase through Concur at my company get applied nearly immediately to currently purchased tickets for anyone else on a ticketed flight on the same carrier. They have been doing this since the end of last year. In fact, I canceled a flight and then immediately booked another flight to a different city and couldn't use the credit that was showing. In the past, you had to actually rebook the same airline if you had a credit. It showed in my wallet for a couple of days on delta.com then disappeared. I've also gotten an email telling me that an unused credit from a different employee was applied to my ticket shortly after booking a flight. I had no unused credit at the time.
That sounds like an arrangement your company has with DL due to perhaps a centrally billed account. And good for them for being able to negotiate that (seriously, it's a great practice for businesses that have that negotiating power).
But for everyday consumers, such as the folks who write in to Elliott, they're buying run of the mill tickets directly from the airline. The rules there are clear and pretty consistent across all the major players - nonrefundable tickets cannot be refunded, only changed, and usually with a fee and of course the fare difference. The passenger is one aspect that cannot be changed, thus a flight credit (issued as an intermediary step to allow the "change" of a ticket when not needing the existing flights is known but the new flights desired are not yet known) is issued to the passenger and must be used by the same passenger.
AFAIK this is not unique to Delta.