I got pretty sick recently and am going to miss two flights, one on SW and one on United. I bought the tickets at the cheapest rate. I understand that I can use the amount spent for future flights, but I do not know how to do this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Don't know about southwest but if you bought the cheapest (non refundable) on UA about your only option is to change them to another date and pay the hefty change fee. (Plus any price difference). I feel for you, i had a cheap ticket a while back (iah-dfw) and it would have cost me more to change it than i paid for it. I just ended up buying the extra miles and eating the ticket. (Wanted to get something out of it.)
Depending on how far out the flights are, it might be worth it to wait before cancelling. Schedule changes or cancellations might get you a way to get your ticket refunded.
You can use the Southwest ticket value for a future purchase. You just need to cancel the reservation and keep the confirmation number. The confirmation number holds your funds at Southwest until you use them again for your next flight. I'm not sure about United.
SW = just cancel. The "funds" used will be in your account for a future transcation. UA = I dont think they're refundable ... and if you need to change dates its $150. To change the flight (same day) is $75. I booked a RT LAX <-> SFO for ~$160 but had to change the flight from a Friday to a Monday and it cost $150. (Grandparents sick) I asked if I could cancel it & rebook it; they said no. If i canceled it its gone.
Remember than nonrefundable really means that you cannot normally get your money back. Most domestic tickets can be turned into some sort of a credit (for future flights on that carrier) minus the change fee and normally do not need to be used on the same route. Check the deadlines and other conditions carefully. Your first step probably should be to call the airline and cancel before the flight. In the case of severe and documented illness, you might be able to get an exception, especially if you are an elite FF on that carrier.
On United you absolutely need to call before the original scheduled departure or the value is nil. Assuming you call then the value of the ticket is preserved but you have to pay a change fee (domestic is generally $150; international can be higher) and UA charges new money for that. Once you pay the fee the value of the old ticket can be used for the originally named passenger on a new trip. If there is residual value after the original ticket cost is consumed then you get an e-voucher (TCV) for the remaining amount.
Hi, Thanks for your response! How late or should I say when would the drop dead time for cancelling a flight for SW? I will be flying out Sun Nov 4. I bought this as a back-up plan in case A/A changed times on me. Geo
I believe you can cancel as close as 5 minutes prior to departure, but I couldn't find anything specific on their website. If it were me, I would cancel before check-in starts 24 hours prior to departure, but you might want to call Southwest to confirm, if getting as close as possible to the departure time is important to you.
A final update for this goes as follows.......I cancelled the SW flight around 2300hrs the night b4....I have a year to use the $400dollar or so credit. If I had paid extra for early board or other stuff like that...the extras would be forfeited. The flight on A/A went off without a hitch,so i'm good for now. Thanks for the help I was given by everyone here! Geo
