Getting value from a unusable cheap ticket?
 

I bought a cheap one-way ticket a while back to visit some family in CA next weekend; $127.80 out of my own pocket. I just found out my work schedule has changed for next week and now I will be flying to CA on a company paid ticket, since I'll be coming from a customer site and not from home. Totally ok with me since I still get the weekend with my family and I get another billable week this month. :)

Since the $127.80 ticket is less than the $150 change fee, I will likely just end up throwing the ticket away. I've been traveling for work for quite a while and frequent travel changes just come with the job. I've thrown many tickets away over the year and I will not lose sleep over the $127.80. Money is money though, and I have been racking my brain on how to not completely lose the entire value of this ticket.

My question to all the crafty Delta frequent flyers out there is: Has anyone come up with a creative way to get any residual value from a ticket that costs less than the change fee? Perhaps a little known DL loophole of some kind? I am a DM, so maybe a creative use of a Medallion benefit? Has anyone gotten a really understanding phone agent that waived the fee or something similar?

The only thing I have come up with is hoping for bad weather or an operational problem. I am going to hold on to the ticket until the very last minute, and hope there is a storm or something that would cause something about my routing to qualify for a waived change fee, or on the day of departure there are irregular ops that would allow me to cancel the ticket sans fees. These are obviously long shots though.

The only way really to get a waiver would be some sort of disaster so no offense but I hope you are not able to get your 127.50 back.

Wow! Why are so many responses to posts on this forum so negative and unconstructive? Are we frequent flyers really that jaded? :p

Disaster seems a bit dramatic, don't you think? Granted a weather issue is an inconvenience that even I am hoping to avoid, but it is Spring storm season after all. But a mechanical issue that delays the flight enough to qualify for a refund is hardly a disaster.

Let's not make me a monster for wanting to figure out a way to save some money. :cool:

I assume you can't use your cheap ticket and have the company reimburse it instead of buying a new one for you. I would be reluctant to ask the company to pay for the unused ticket due to the work schedule change because you're ending up where you want to be for the weekend, but in normal circumstances many companies do pay change fees when they alter an approved vacation schedule or there's a work emergency.

I am actually an independant consultant, so the "company paid" ticket is really just airfare that will be expensed back to the customer. Being basically self-employed unfortunately means I eat the cost of the unusable ticket, which naturally is the key reason I posted this question to the FT masses.

Nope - you're screwed. No point in cancelling till the very end, maybe you get lucky and there is a MX issue that cancels the flight.

I always thought the airlines should give you something if you cancel - even something trivial as $25 in credit if you cancel 24 hours prior. Just somehing so that you have some incentive to cancel the ticket and not just do nothing...perhaps that allows them to sell the seat. But I suppose nowadays everything is oversold anyway

That's actually the point; since so many flights are oversold, if you cancel in advance that would save the airline from having to dish out $100-$600 in VDB compensation. That should be worth getting rid of the $150 change fee, in a logical world.

Airline fares and fees have not been logical for years and years.

People here don't seem to understand why some (cheaper) plane ticket are inflexible and other (more expensive) tickets are flexible. It's a matter of segmenting the market and using differences in sensitivity to price. It's not about charging a fee that represents the cost of someone changing or canceling a ticket.

I'm really curious to know the thought behind this remark. :confused:

That means that if he gets back his money, something bad has happened (weather or else). By 'hoping' that he will not get his money back, he really hopes nothing bad will happen to the OP

If DL refunded non-refundable tickets, who in their right mind woul purchase refundable fares. Slitting your own throat.

DL doesn't really pay out that many VDB's on a % basis and counts on these throwaways. If they get caught once in a while, it's still worth it compared to losing the lucrative non-discounted fares.

I don't think the OP is saying that they should get rid of non-refundable fares per se, but rather a token amount might be enough to solicit more people to willingly cancel a ticket in advance if they're plans change, rather than just no-showing for the flight or playing the "lottery" of waiting until right before the flight and hoping for a weather or MX issue but sort of figuring it's a throw-away ticket.

On some flights that are oversold, or where they could potentially sell a Y/B/M ticket if they knew 24-36 hours out that your V/X ticket is just going to otherwise go out empty there is some potential value to advance notice. I know my business commute route they don't oversell allllll that often, but they do sell tickets <24 hours before the flights; having more availability to sell last minute there has some major revenue opportunities for DL.

I agree but they also know what the historical averages are. I am willing to bet in market that sells 125 tickets not a lot of last minute y/b/m are sold.

They aren't going to pay VDB if someone doesn't cancel but just doesn't show up. It happens every single day. "We need volunteers"...."Well, we didn't really need you after all".