Falcon20

I recently cancelled a flight and was given the 1 year hold on the funds to apply to a new flight.

Now that the 24 hold is gone, how do I apply the funds via CO.com? I used to book a new ticket, put it on hold, then call rez to process the credit.

Now I have to buy the new ticket. Anyobody deal with this or do I just need to book everything with rez and forget about CO.com? I still want my 500 bonus miles through CO.com.

Syzygies

The new ticket inherits the provenance of the old ticket -- a 100% EQM cheapie bought on CO.com is still the same kind of ticket, if reissued over the phone. You pay the $100 (or whatever) penalty at that time, to free up the full value of your ticket as a credit. You then make any additional payment needed to offset any fare increase. You don't get any partial refund for future use.

So just scout fares and availability, then give them a call.

That said, I still haven't managed to claim a credit from last June. Something always comes up, like they can't find the same fare or flights I'm looking at. You want to unload this credit at the earliest convenient opportunity.

As for the 500 miles bonus, aren't you trying to claim them twice here? Small potatoes, focus on unloading your credit successfully.

This all strikes me as needlessly Byzantine. I understand the need for cancellation penalty disincentives, but why make the customer and CO jump through painful hoops, why not just make the residual value of the ticket a "Continental Store Credit" that expires after a year?

My all-time favorite bumber sticker is Money Talks -- Mine Says Goodbye. Put the cancellation penalty teeth in the penalty value itself, but make the logistics of using the residual value as straightforward as possible. I'd see CO making money on more cheap tickets bought on spec, by people like me who can't afford full fare.

Falcon20

Not trying to double dip, just wanted to make sure I didn't lose the mileage in the process. I think you answered this by saying the new ticket will retain 100% of it's former life, to include the 500 miles. ^

allergictocoach

You should be able to see the old reservation on CO.com by logging in and looking under Cancelled reservations for the confirmation number of the booking you cancelled. Once you select the reservation you should see a link at the top left in blue to "reissue ticket". From this point, you should be able to select flights for a new reservation. Once you do that, CO.com will figure the cost of the new flight and apply the appropriate change fee.
Worked for me yesterday with a reservation I cancelled in Dec. 2005.

yellow77

There's even some chance it could be 1000 miles if you booked the original ticket last June. A ticket I reissued according to the procedure listed in the preceding post shows the 'ticketing date' as the original booking date (June in your case). At that point the bonus was 1000 miles, and that property may still inhere in the new booking, just as it would have done had you booked a ticket in June 2005 for 2006 travel and never changed or canceled it.