Lori_Q

Well, yes, if it's refundable. :-) My impression was that Z fares, which are discounted Business, are almost never refundable.

Interesting conversation in the thread about CXLFEE/CHGFEE/REFUNDABLE endorsements, and the use of united.com > Advanced Search > Unrestricted fares. I stopped looking at the Unrestricted fares a long time ago because they rarely returned fares I'd be willing to pay. Maybe I need to include that in my toolkit when I start booking non0business travel again.

jsloan

:-) As I said earlier in the thread, it depends upon the market. In this particular case, the Z fares appear to be refundable less a cancellation fee, and that's definitely something that I've seen before. There's no hard-and-fast rule linking fare classes to availability; I've seen refundable W fares and non-refundable Y fares, both on UA. (I've even purchased a fully-refundable S fare, domestically).

Unrestricted is rarely a good deal. For domestic travel, there are some routes where 'flexible' fares are actually quite reasonable, and they tend to be fully refundable (no cancellation fee, no change fee). The S fare I mentioned was one of those -- UA published a differential fare table for that route, where it was $50 more expensive each way than the regular nonrefundable flight with a change fee.

However, for international travel, I think the main point is just to look at the fare rules. Sometimes, even the least-expensive fare has nice refund terms -- generally, UA will match whatever their main competition is in that market. And, of course, a paid service like ExpertFlyer or KVS Tool would allow you to look at all available fares and see if there's one that has the restrictions you want. You can then do a search by fare class, or call a travel agent or the airline directly and book by fare code. (You can use ITA Matrix to make sure that the flight has availability and the fare is applicable to the flights you want.