yvrcnx

I hope someone might be able to clarify a question I have about purchasing a new ticket with the current conditions.
According to the current rules it says that ticket is changeable without any change fees but it doesn't clarify if a fare difference needs to be paid in case airfare is higher at the new dates.

I am planning to by a return from EU to YVR but the return might have to be changed, depending on the situation in either country.
Currently airfares are quite low but might increase in the new year. Just want to confirm before I book a return if I can easily change the return if all flights are the same and just the date is different without having to pay a fare difference or do fare differences always apply and need to be paid?

Has anyone had any experience with the new condtions?

NickB

AIUI, you do have to pay the fare difference. It is just the change fee which is not imposed at the moment.

irishguy28

Yes, you will always have to pay the fare difference.

It's just part of the basic "architecture" of airline fare systems. If it were possible to change tickets to any desired date simply by paying the change fee, then there would be a mini-industry of people searching for the cheapest date for their given route, and then paying the change fee to change to their actual desired date; it would make no sense for the airline to charge fares that were greater than the lowest-available fare plus the change fee, because then you would just buy the "wrong" date, and change it to the date for which they were originally charging a much higher fare.

The pandemic hasn't changed this; the only dispensation is that they will waive the change fee. Fare differences must always be paid.

I would sincerely advise you NOT to buy a ticket until you know you actually need to travel. Given the likelihood of the airline travel disruption lasting well into next year, the "lure" of a cheap price now shouldn't be what forces your hand. If anything, you may obtain a better price later.

And regardless of the waiver of change fees - which I expect will be the "new normal" for quite some time to come - I would not see that as a reason to now book a ticket for a date for which you are not fully committed.

yvrcnx

Thank you, that does make sense and I understand.

We actually flew from YVR to Zurich a couple of days ago on a one way ticket.
We are not sure yet how long we are staying in Europe and this ticket would be for us to fly back home.

So we definitely need to fly from the EU back to YVR at some point and my thought was to instead of buying a one way, to buy a return since we are planning to be back in Spring anyway and to add the return portion would only add an additional EURO 150 - 200 per ticket which would be a great value but if for some reason we do end up having to change our return to Europe it might actually end up priced higher with the fare difference (depending on how they would calculate the new fare) than purchasing a separate ticket when we are coming back though tickets from YVR always seem to be priced at over CAN$ 1,000 and right now the round trip from EU is about CAN$ 650.

I hope this makes sense but you did answer my question and it will help me greatly make the right decision.

Thank you again!

johan rebel

Has the potential of becoming a vicious circle.

Passengers sensibly deferring ticket purchases until the last possible moment makes it much harder for airlines to predict future loads, causing them to trim schedules, causing potential customers to hold back due to uncertainty, etc.

Lots of last minute bookings also impacts cash flow, which is already a headache.

Johan