As posted in the status match thread:
Westjet allows Golds to take any flight that day. However WS's version of Sabre hasn't got the memo. So if you late show the flight within 2 hours your fine, after that the system eats your cash and puts you as a no show.
The suggestion was, if I knew I would not make a flight within the two hour window, to call in and ask them to drop the seg from the PNR. The money stays but there is no flight attached. Ie: nothing to be auto cancelled after the two hours.
A few flights ago from YYZ to YUL, I had to take a later flight.
When I arrived at the airport I waited in line for 20 minutes, too many pax and not enough agents. When I got to the counter the agent looked at my file, saw the missing seg, was confused until I told her what we had done, she booked a seat on the next flight and attached it to the PNR. ready to fly.
Aerobod or Brook if I got something wrong please chime in and correct me.
From Aerobod:
yul36, your synopsis is pretty accurate!
At the moment the Sabre module that controls the ticket coupon integrity is not able to differentiate status of a guest, so the ticket coupons remaining (electronic rendition of them of course, but for inter-airline compatibility the whole industry has to use processes that hark back to the paper world) will be automatically cancelled due to a no-show. Currently it is a complex manual process to re-instate the coupons, the next step is to make it a simple process. The future will see a different module that has more flexible capabilities to integrate status with the departure control process.
At the moment it is best to call the Contact Centre before the scheduled departure time and have the booking modified.