LHCVG

As title says, I will be flying home the week of Christmas to the see my parents who I haven't seen in a year. Given Dad's declining health and Mom's obvious stress from COVID-ness (no infection, just all the "stuff" around it in life), really should go see them. So, work was nice enough to give me the whole time off, I go and good book my ticket, and then the next day we get a notice from the County that they want to close all indoor restaurant dining effective Tuesday evening. Being a restaurant worker, that obviously means we likely will end up with reduced hours (greatly reduced) and/or a straight furlough/layoff (we were all laid off in the spring and brought back over the summer).

For reference, the trip as booked is a DCA-CVG r/t Dec.21-27 (Monday-Sunday). DL of course, interestingly AA axed their n/s competition on the route after running it essentially all the time since US began doing it circa 2013 (not that I'm surprised at the city, just an observation about cuts).

Since my time off was approved, the trip is good to as far as work is concerned regardless, so that front is fine. But I got to thinking about my change strategy since I haven't had the chance to play with these new COVID change rules. Per the above, we won't have any new substantive information until the measure formally passes (we all assume that's a near certainty) and corporate has their say-so about what they are going to do (our GM wants to try and enclose more of the outside space and such, but I can't say if that's a realistic operational plan). Point being, it could honestly go either way as far as whether I am more or less still at work and the trip remains a "usual" work trip, or if we are furloughed then I might be interested in making a change.

So here is where my decision will play out and where I need the advice:

--It's possible (again, everything is just co-dependent right now) that we are more or less still working in some fashion, but if my schedule gets adjusted down on either side of the trip, I might be tempted to move either end a day or two. Neither fish nor fowl, but just something I figure is worth exploring if indeed I unintentionally end up with more days off, and the new ticket price would not be a major increase over my current one.

--If we end up furloughed in some way, my thinking is that I might just hop in the car and drive (schedule flexibility, would be able to bring the cat to meet "grandma and grandpa" -- grandma would love this option!), banking that ticket until sometime next year. I don't yet have any plans to go anywhere, but I can definitely foresee my usual 1-2 trips a year to see Mom and Dad so it will at very least get used there.


At first, I didn't foresee these as necessarily mutually exclusive, but then I got to thinking about the implications of the change for reticketing/re-issuing, and how that affects the value of my banked ticket if I do make a change. Which leads to my questions:

1) If I were to find that prices on either end of my trip were close enough that making a change for an additional day or two there and make the change, would that "use up" the change "privilege" attached to the ticket, whereby I would then be stuck with a ticket under normal rules? Or is this special change regime good for any changes through Dec. 31, such that I can change departure from say Dec. 21 to Dec. 20 and then subsequently make another change later? I don't see that being the case, just seemed prudent to ask so I don't use up such a valuable ticket asset to have.

2) Under the furlough scenario, I end up deciding to can the flight altogether and drive for Christmas, do I have to do anything in particular before travel to indicate that I wish to keep that ticket value under said COVID change rules, or will it automatically just tick over to a banked value after departure of the ticketed flights? I just want to avoid that situation where not doing anything possibly leaves me in a "no-show" situation if I don't cancel it, but I've never done that in this kind of scenario before either.

3) Is my understanding correct that said "post-change" ticket may or may not have special COVID change priveleges attached if indeed the agent doing the change inadvertently re-issues (obviously my verbiage may be off, but I feel like I've scenarios like this come up), and that I need to be careful with the CSR to make sure they do it the "right" way? (this is presuming that I would be able to make some kind of new booking before Dec. 31st in order to maintain that COVID change privilege if possible)


I know it's long but wanted to explain the situation in case there are details that might change your advice.

Thanks all for the wisdom as always!