JetBlue and Alaska previously announced free change policies due to the coronavirus.
American is now announcing their own policy.
It’s applicable for tickets purchased between March 1, 2020 at 4:30pm CST and March 16, 2020 at 11:59pm CST for travel between March 1, 2020 and January 26, 2021.
If you do make a change, the change fee will be waived, but the difference in fare will still apply.
However American is only allowing one free change and they are requiring that you make the change at least 14 days before your scheduled flight.
It’s an odd restriction for a promotion designed to make nervous travelers feel at ease buying tickets in an era of coronavirus. After all, people are likely to cancel travel plans closer to departure in the case of the virus spreading in their destination.
But as I said when JetBlue announced their policy, “However it may also backfire and starve airlines of change/cancel fees that they count on in order to upsell refundable fares and drive ancillary revenue.”
Apparently American took those fears to heart when they crafted their policy.
Additionally American is excluding award tickets from this policy, while Alaska and JetBlue applied the policy to paid and award tickets.
Your turn Delta and United. Will you copy JetBlue or American?
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12 Comments On "American Does A Poor Job Matching JetBlue’s Coronavirus Change Policy"
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So American won’t allow a canceled ticket on a reward ticket?
#AAmeriCANT
And this is why, when I have a choice, I fly Southwest.
JetBlue even let me cancel a blue basic ticket even though I bought it before they announced this policy.
DL will follow B6
UA will follow AA or something worse. Though it’s hard to be worse than American these days.
Just flew Delta from Mia to Tlv on Feb 27 with the family.
We were supposed to stop in fco. After HUCA they rebooked us through jfk. No changes fee, no fare difference.
delta is pretty good like that! unless you get a bad agent, that thinks there the CEO and all decisions run through them.
So if I purchased a ticket prior to 3/1 this wont apply
How is this even possible to be applicable for flights bought March 1 for travel between Mar 1 and Jan 26? If it does not work for flights within 14 days it effectively means that it will only work for flights starting in 14 days from now. So in reality its for flights starting ,March 14, right?
It looks like Delta is following Jet Blue now: https://www.delta.com/us/en/advisories/other-alerts/coronavirus-situation
Does the same apply if you book thru third party ie chase portal? and if so where would you get the refund to?
Dan- Is there any way to get an award ticket cancelled without the redeposit fee? Who is able to get around this?