Hello, I have some bigger Problem at the moment,

I have booked a flight from December 20th to January 10th, but instead i would rather fly around 7th, to spend 2 more weeks with my girlfriend over Christmas.
The problem is, i cannot cancel or change my flight. So my only option would be to book a second flight, and waste the other flight.

So my question is, is there any way, that i can get a refund of the other flight or possible change my flight without spending 200 euro for a new ticket? I'm a student so flushing down 200 euro down like that is really a huge amount of money for me, i realize it is my mistake, but is there any way that i could get this any cheaper?

Would writing to the airline and explaining my situation help anything?
I also read that there are sometimes full refunds given if there is some medical problem, but this kinda only works when you want your flight on a later date

I'm thankful for any advice any of you could give me


EDIT:

Airline is KLM
flight is VIENNA <-> AMSTERDAM

You will have to pay the KLM change fee. Sorry. I think it stinks too but I think you would have trouble getting a refund for the flight even if your girlfriend had died. You almost never get a refund for a medical problem, that's why everybody flies around the world spreading the flu, so that won't work either. Almost nothing works. You will have to pay the fee or fly the original dates. If you find a workaround, please post it here and let us know, because we would all want to be able to learn the secret.

Airlines don't make money moving people around the planet. That's the part of the business where they LOSE money. They make money from fees. That's why they have no real way to get away from the fees, other than death itself -- a bit drastic.

What's the booking class/fare code? Intra-EU almost all fares allow changes.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean

Travel class: Economy Class
Booking Code is: xxx

i can change the flight day to 2 days earlier, but that's useless for me

I would not post your personal info on here, since people might be able to use it! def if your last name is in your screenname!

Sounds as if you booked a non-refundable/changeable fare. It's likely that a refundable/changeable ticket would have cost a lot more than the change fee.

There's no reason to waive the change fee because nobody in their right mind would buy the more expensive fare if they could get the same thing for less.

If you are getting 2 extra weeks for the fee, seems a decent deal.

KLM sells different types of economy ticket. To differentiate between them, one must refer to the "fare class" of your ticket. This should be fairly easily derivable from your confirmations from KLM or your travel agent.




In the example above, showing part of the e-ticket confirmation from KLM, the "class" is N for both flights.

Now see this page:

http://www.klm.com/travel/nl_en/plan...ions/index.htm





As long as your ticket has no flights in fare class "G", which can not be changed or cancelled, you will be able to make changes to your ticket. You will have to pay a "change fee", and will possibly have to pay an additional fare, based on the fares available on the date and particular flight that you now wish to travel on.

You should ring KLM, or your agent if the ticket was not booked direct with KLM, to enquire how much it would cost to change your current ticket to the flights and dates you now want. If you are changing just one flight, it is highly likely that the cost of changing the ticket will work out cheaper than just throwing away this ticket and buying a brand new one.

Just one further point, in case you are thinking of doing something like booking an alternate one-way ticket to get you to Amsterdam on the earlier date that you now wish to travel on - if you do not take the outbound flight of your KLM ticket, and then expect to be able to take the return flight, you will find that your ticket has been cancelled. This is true for almost all airlines (some Low Cost Carriers are an exception) - if you miss any flight during your booked itinerary, the ticket is immediately cancelled and you lose your remaining flights.