Originally Posted by
BiggAW
My company is a government contractor, and our rules (I believe based on government rules since they are government contracts) are completely insane, and make traveling an incredible PITA.
What amazes me is that the airlines must be making a killing on change fees and baggage fees in order to more than compensate for the actual ticket sale losses, and the brand image losses to WN, as well as the dwell time losses to forcing more bagging into carry-on that could be checked. On a recent flight, I would have booked DL for a direct flight to DTW, but ended up booking WN with a connection, as we weren't sure if we were going to have to change something, and end up throwing out $800 worth of tickets.
I also work for a gov't contractor and work with many other companies that work mostly on gov't contracts and we all seem to have fairly different travel rules. We buy primarily non-refundable (but changeable for a fee, so no BE) tickets. We used to be all fully refundable, but they finally did the math and realized it's cheaper to pay change fees, especially since employees who fly the most also get status and have reduced or no change fee. I rarely am able to book more than a week out, and rarely fly the itinerary as originally booked - one end or the other gets changed. For transcons I take non-stops whenever possible (which is almost always) - it's not worth the extra time plus risk of a misconnect to save a change fee or $50 on a fare. In rare cases when I knew the schedule was likely to have multiple changes I've noted that and recommended that they book refundable and it's been done without a problem. I read the thread about "what stupid things does your company do to save a few pennies" and mine actually does very few of them, so I don't complain much about our travel.
Other companies I work with have policies that they make you fly back for the weekend, even if you're going to be back on monday and it's a transcon. That seems fine on regional flights, but I'd just say no for transcons- it kills a couple days traveling and just leaves you tired from the travel and time zone changes.