ericgdukie44

Have an award flight booked to BKK in a few months. I'm only Plat with AA, any chance they'll refund the miles without having to pay the $150 fee given that martial law was just declared there?

Dave Noble

Unless the airline operating the flights has provided a waiver to passengers, then I cannot see it likely. If the flight is operating then not to travel would be a personal choice

Microwave

As AAdvantage is still operating as a distinct programme, this question is being moved over to the relevant thread in the pre-merger American Airlines forum.

Please note the sticky at the top of the consolidated thread which is titled Welcome to the New American Airlines Forum! PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING. With all of the changes about, it is important to know where to post, and reading that thread before posting (as the title suggests ) will help get you in the right place.

I've also updated the thread title to clarify the question.

~Moderator

aero0729

7 months ago booked an award to Thailand one way. I am on an award round trip, my friends travelling with me are on an award one way and a paid ticket the other. AA said there is no policy to make free changes. (Mine are free anyway, but theirs would add up to quite a sum) given Thailand is in a state of martial law, I do not feel good about going there. American said with no official travel policy there would be no change fees waived or difference in airfare covered. I thought they would at-least waive the change fees.

Duke787

They are correct that it would require an actual waiver to be put in place and as of now AA hasn't put one in place. Right now there is no US State Department Travel Warning there is only a Travel Alert. If that is upgraded to a Warning I would expect AA and others to put a waiver policy in place.

Not to be yet another person to harp on Travel Insurance but really this is what travel insurance is for - a $75 policy would cover this type of situation. You should see whether your friend's CC (whichever one he used to book the flights) provides any coverage.

bmchris

You can also use your emergency fund savings.

Microwave

As there's already a thread open for this, I'll go ahead and merge yours in.

I'll also retitle it again as I'm sure this will come up more.

~Moderator

jordyn

Or just use your credit card and go into debt. Or get a second job at Arby's. Or rob a bank and then use that money to pay the change fee. I'm sure OP is delighted to have all of these helpful strategies to cover the cost that don't actually answer their question at all.

As for travel insurance, I'm not sure it would be helpful here. Do policies commonly cover situations where you decide not to travel because of political instability but where the airline hasn't issued a waiver nor has the State Department issued a warning? I'd be interested in learning about which policies cover this, because most travel insurance policies seems to be quite limited in the situations that they can actually be invoked.

Duke787

No they don't commonly cover this situation but depending on the type of coverage you can get coverage that contains clauses including "Cancel for any reason" that would cover this.

A quick check of insuremytrip.com with random dates shows at least 17 plans that include "cancel for any reason" clauses with prices ranging from $96 - $189 for a hypothetical 2 week trip to BKK that cost $2,000 with most appearing to offer 75% reimbursement of non-refundable trip costs.

jordyn

Just took a quick look. As far as I can tell, the "cancel for any reason" is a supplement on top of the cheapest plans, so you're realistically talking about $150 for getting back $1500, so you'd need to cancel about one in ten trips to make this worthwhile.

There's some good things about travel insurance, but I suspect if you're doing it to gain scheduling flexibility in scenarios like this you're probably not getting great value for your money.

Duke787

True but if you're traveling to certain regions of the world it makes reasonable sense to protect yourself with that kind of investment. The violence in BKK isn't new within the last week, this current martial law is new but the violence / protests / unrest is not new so this is a country where that kind of protection makes sense.

Obviously it's not worth it for every trip, if you're traveling to London base coverage should be sufficient (if you even choose to get coverage) but to certain regions of the world this is a reasonable and relatively cost-effective option for hedging. Ideally one would cancel 0/10 trips and they would never need the coverage anyway but if you're going to spend the money to go to the other side of the world as the OP is doing, it's not unreasonable to pay an extra bit to hedge against something like this.

FAA1996

Would AA ever issue a travel waiver to a destination they don't serve?

Blumie

FWIW, having been to Bangkok numerous times and based on what I'm hearing and reading, I'd still be comfortable going.

Jish

Agreed. Everybody is different and safety should always be a priority, but I went in February during the height of the protests and felt generally safe.

There is extra security checking bags various places (such as at shopping malls) and I wouldn't linger around protest areas / groups. But generally the places you would go as a visitor should be fine.

JonNYC

And for that matter, since virtually any trip booked for the present period was booked during the on-going period of relative disturbance/uncertainty/etc at the time-- unlike most of these where it's an "out of the blue" problem. Other than that, it really would be asking AA to provide travel insurance on all award tickets.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/agency/Travel_Notice/kenya.jsp

BTW, in the above, just by chance, one can clearly see examples of "red policy" vs. the "green policy" for rebooking-- as they actually show it in red and green.