She had a stroke and can’t fly — should her airline waive the $150 change fee?

I am glad to hear that all worked out well and that she purchases cancellation insurance for some of her trips, but if she knows there is a $150.00 cancellation penalty and insurance will only cost a minimal amount then she should have purchased it. The non refundable fees charged by most airlines is unacceptable in my opinion, it is simply a money grab, a more acceptable fee would be perhaps $25.00 or value percentage based on the cost of the base fare.

It does not seem unreasonable that airlines should simply write the concept of documented medical emergency exceptions into the contract of carriage. This is not the first time I’ve seen the gratuitous “one-time exception”, either on this site or personally. Writing that it’s a “one-time exception” makes it sound like the airline is begrudgingly getting rid of the fee… “Fine, we’ll get rid of this fee THIS ONE TIME, but don’t you dare have another stroke and miss another one of our flights.” Frankly, while the customer does get the end result they are looking for, the tone of the response is nearly as insulting as charging the fee.

I work in a clinic, and if the clinic I work at charged every client 80% of the office call fee every time somebody didn’t show up for an appointment, none of of my clients would come back to my clinic. But my clients have choices.

With the continued push to merge the airlines, our choices are shrinking for travel. And with every airline charging these outlandish change fees, we travelers are held hostage to them. The answer is to not travel… a solution that the airlines have been dealing with thanks to shrinking passenger counts for the past 5 years. Sure, their flights remain full now, but with a decreased number of flights… the “full planes” are a manufactured result. It’s a poor long-term business strategy to alienate your client base for the sake of short-term profits.

@ Kimberly – “I really don’t understand WHY airlines are so wicked about this. We all know it does NOT cost $150 to simply do a couple of key strokes and change or credit a ticket.”
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If the public wants the airlines to get rid of the ‘change’ fee and the other fees then depend a level playing fields for all airlines. Until there is a level playing fields, all of these fees will continue.

Having spent 45 years in IT, I happen to know that the actual cost of changing a name or date on a ticket is a fraction of a second of processor usage. A creative accountant could add in data entry time and fixed facility cost to burden this out to perhaps ten bucks. Anything the airlines are charging us in excess of this is a pure ripoff.

Fees should only be put in place for 2 reasons:
1) To Cover Extra Costs Associated with additional work outside the normal
2) Deter Customers from using those services, but if they do, know that you are going to make a boatload of money on that service.

Baggage fees are supposedly there for option 1. While I agree that there are certain expenses that go into shipping luggage, some of the rates for bags are a little rediculous. Yes, you have the cost of the fuel for the plane. Yes, you hae the cost of the baggage handlers and systems for managing the baggage. That should not need a $25-$50 Fee On Top of my ticket price. And Why is a Second Bag More? Under the hypothetical that the Bag Price is completely Seperate from the Seat Price, It costs exactly the same amount to transport Bag 1 as it does Bag 2. Guess the Price for the second bag is more towards option 2 above…

The Change Fee is definately in place for number 2. Airlines DO NOT want people changing their plans because the airlines make their plans accordingly.
There is no reason though that if someone gives you enough notice, say a week or two, that you should not charge some nominal fee and resell their seat. As long as the airlines have enough time to attempt to resell that seat, there should not be an issue.
I completely understand the last minute change fees – To an Extent. If I am scheduled on an 8PM flight, but my meeting ended early and there are open seats on the 5PM Flight going to the exact same place, how much does it really cost the airline to switch my seat if there are empty seats available? Same Route, Same TOTAL number of available seats in that route, Same Butt(Mine) sitting in one of those seats. Some Nominal Fee for the time the agent took to transfer me to the new flight would be acceptable for getting me on that flight with a seat.
BUT, if you cancel a flight or change a destination inside the acceptable time period, the airline should charge you a higher rate change fee because there is the likely hood that they won’t be able to resell that seat and will have lost out on your revenue in that seat.
Now, All that said, the Carriers get away with washing their hands of responsiblities with the Act Of God, why doesn’t the same apply to passengers? The airlines can cost passangers time and money for cancelling flights, shouldn’t the same work in reverse for customers? If I can prove that I am medically NOT allowed to fly due to some ciscumstance that occured AFTER I purchased my ticket, then that should apply here. Period.

Once the airlines learn how to actually run a business that treats customers as People instead of Wallets, they may actually start showing MORE Profits and have MORE customers returning to use their services…

The questions keep arising as to WHY airlines charge these fees when they don’t seem to be in line with actual costs the airlines incur.
The simple answer is that they charge these fees BECAUSE THEY CAN! For the past decade, it’s been proven time and again that passengers will pay these increased fees.

I may actually take the airline’s side on the change fee expense. Let’s move the discussion outside the realm of travel for a moment. If you have a contract with a person to perform a service on a specified date and because of this, you turn down other jobs, rearrange your plans, and make sure you have all the materials to perform your job, how would you feel if a month out the other person cancelled. What if it were 2 weeks out? Now how about if it is the day before? Within each of these timeframes, most answers will change from, ok, I can deal, line up something else, to wow, now what I am supposed to do with all this excess material and now the loss of a job, which means loss of income for me. The change fees are the airlines answer to stop the loss of income that could result as more people cancel and or change their flights.
If an airline has 250 seats on a plane and sells 250 of them for a certain day and time of travel, lets say this flight sold out 2 months before departure, and then has 50 people cancel between one month out and a few days out, the airline may or may not be able to sell all the changed tickets, thus resulting in a loss of revenue. How many customers did the airline turn away 2 months out because all the seats were sold? Now when I choose to change or cancel my flight, why should I not pay?
I have said before, I fly southwest for this reason, they do not have a change fee. I am really not certain if the change fees of other airlines are warranted to the extent they charge them or not. However, these fees are disclosed and can and do go into the decision making process of whether I am going to spend $200 on a non-refundable ticket, to spending $300 on one that has less restrictions. Since the option was available to me, if I choose the cheaper flight, the risk is now mine, whereas by paying a higher price, the risk is transferred to the airline.
The reason that the airlines are not responsible for force majeure event is long established in contract law. Government and our laws have favored businesses as a whole because they are what economies are built on. Would an airline ever operate if it knew it would be responsible not only for refunding the fares, but also damages (nights at a hotel, lost revenue of passengers, etc) everytime a volcano erupted or a snow storm occured? Probably not. The risk is too great. A fire burns down a hotel and cannot fulfill its side of the contract, forcing people to pay more or even to not have rooms, however, force majeure ruled and damages were not awarded.
Should the airlines change their contracts to include medical reasons as a means to get out of a change fee? Socially, yes. Business wise? No.

@ Alan – “Having spent 45 years in IT, I happen to know that the actual cost of changing a name or date on a ticket is a fraction of a second of processor usage.”
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The pricing obejctive of the change fee is to ‘control’ behavior…it is NOT to cover the actual cost to change a ticket.

For example, I sell software solutions and one of our software solutions has ID module. It is very common for our software users to charge their employees and their customers $ 25 to $ 75 to replace a lost ID card that cost them $ 3. It isn’t that they want to make a profit but to control behavior. I have one client that told me that they won’t charge their employees and customers for lost cards. By the end of the first 30 days, over 300 ID cards were lost. They implemented a $ 75 replacement cost and only five cards have been lost in the following ten years.

The key for an airline is yield management…filling up the seats on a plane without overselling (or bumping passengers from a flight). For example, if a plane has 150 seats…they will probably will sell 160 seats because they realized that some passengers won’t show up; missed their connections; their connections are late; etc.

If there was no change fee or a low change fee ($ 25, $ 50), people will be changing their flights all of the time. There will be no incentive to get to the airport on time. For the legacy airlines that operates a hub and spoke operations that will play havoc on their operations and yield management. Please understand that Southwest has a hybrid point to point model of operations so passengers missing their flights don’t affect their operations to the degree that it affects a hub and spoke.

While I’m glad that this woman got the fee waived, I’m not so sure that Delta would have been so evil to insist that she pay it. It sounds like she cancelled her trip less than two weeks before it was to take place; it’s quite possible that Delta could not resell her seat in that amount of time. If that was the case, it comes down to a question of who should incur a loss due to the passenger’s stroke: the passenger, or the airline? (Personally, I feel that there should never be a penalty if the airline is able to resell the seat, since to charge a penalty in the case of a flight that ends up full anyway amounts to double-dipping).

That said, I think change fees should be capped at a percentage of the fare paid. Charging a $150 change fee on a $209 flight is ridiculous – they might as well just make her forfeit the whole thing. If the fee was, say, $50, that might be more reasonable.

I also think that change fees should be waived if the change is made more than a certain amount of time in advance. This case in particular doesn’t bother me so much, since the cancellation was made a couple of weeks before the flight, but say that you book a flight for nine months out and then a month late your plans change, or you realize you made an error. Why should you have to pay a change fee then?

I’ve said this numerous times, but IMHO one of the reasons to fly Southwest isn’t their “bags fly free” ad campaign, or the fact that they’re the cheapest (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t). One of the lesser-discussed reasons to fly them is that every ticket, no matter how cheap, is fully changeable with no penalties (you can’t get a refund on the cheap fares, but you can apply the full amount you paid to another ticket). I’ve taken advantage of this policy twice; my wife and I planned to fly for our honeymoon and decided to make it a road trip instead, so we cancelled our tickets and used the money to buy tickets to an upcoming wedding for which we knew we’d be flying Southwest anyway. For that wedding, we also decided to switch to a slightly earlier return flight to be in sync with some family members. Both changes were made at no cost to us and with zero hassles – I just logged on to the website and made them.

I don’t fly Southwest exclusively, but I definitely take their liberal change policies into consideration when booking flights.

Just fly Southwest. They manage to be on time, treat you well, and don’t charge change fees. Heck, they gave me money BACK when I changed a ticket by one day because the fee was lower.

It pays to be honest. SWA knows this.

@ kevin -”I completely understand the last minute change fees – To an Extent. If I am scheduled on an 8PM flight, but my meeting ended early and there are open seats on the 5PM Flight going to the exact same place, how much does it really cost the airline to switch my seat if there are empty seats available? Same Route, Same TOTAL number of available seats in that route, Same Butt(Mine) sitting in one of those seats. Some Nominal Fee for the time the agent took to transfer me to the new flight would be acceptable for getting me on that flight with a seat.”
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I agree with you. A month ago, I had a flight from ORD to PHX on UA. There were two earlier flights and both flights went with empty seats but the standy fee for UA is $ 75. My flight left over 2 hours late. UA ended up upgrading me to Economy Plus since Economy was oversold then they upgraded me to First Class since E+ was oversold (there were over 40 passengers on the standby list…passengers with connections that missed the earlier two PHX flights). I have no status with UA except being a Star Alliance Gold Member.

If you are an elite FF with an airline, they will waive the stand-by fee.

@Sam: 3- The Airline Industry used to offer compassion discounted airfares due to death in the family….Then the American public started dying in record numbers.

4- The Airline Industry tried to control those costs and then requested “Verification of the Death”…Relationship to the deceased and Dr. and Funeral Parlor information.

How long ago are you talking about? When my grandmother died in 1979, the so-called bereavement fare was STILL far more expensive than just getting a last-minute ticket. We checked into the bereavement fare, and were told it was a percentage off the most expensive ticket. We went to the airport and bought a ticket and it was cheaper.

@Arizona Road Warrior Fares today on the legacy airlines are lower than their fares 10, 15 and 20 years ago.

15 years ago I was traveling from DFW-ATL on a fairly regular basis for $160 roundtrip. Now it’s $268 at minimum for a round trip. Where have fares gone down?

If you want a ticket that you can change,buy a refundable ticket. If you want to save money, buy a non-refundable ticket and take the risk that at a later date it might cost you more than the ticket cost to change it.

You pay less for a ticket you can’t change for the same reason you pay less for a non-refundable hotel room. The company doesn’t have any risk in the reservation its all yours.

Flutiefan said it best – you know the rules when you buy it. Don’t be mad that the airlines enforce their rules.

The folks arguing in favor of the change fee makes good points, but they are thinking to theoretically. A few problems with the change fee.

Income/Revenue model

Under the current system, it doesn’t matter whether the airline is likely to recover the “lost” revenue. If I buy a ticket 9 months before a flight and cancel 1 hour later, I have to pay a change fee even though the airline may resellmy seat easily.

Force Majeure

Sure this is a proper reason for an airline to cancel the ticket, but it only applies one way. Its not a reason for you to cancel your ticket. During Hurricane Katrina, American Airlines refused to refund tickets. Despite my protestations, I was only able to obtain a credit.

Lack of competition

Many people of blindly stating that you know the rules, deal with it. Those folks are thinking within the normal American paradign of health competition which limits the ability of business to operate oppressively. Airlines do not have health competition. That’s why they can impose onerous and silly rules, e.g. back to back restrictions, hidden city restrictions, change fees, etc. that hotels and car rentals cannot even dream of enacting.

I take that back, cruise lines, which operate with less competition and transparency actually impose even worse rules on passengers, e.g. repricing tickets after purchase, changing destinations and ports of call.

Chris, have you considered leaving your polls open longer or starting them later so that your West Coast readers have a chance to vote?

Change fee policies should take effect inside 21 days of travel, regardless of reason for the change.

@Geoff

A business is never wrong to offer a refund. Its the business’ money to do with as they please, including generating positive customer experiences.

@Bob Pleohn

That is a false dichotomy premised upon the supposition that the number of seats sold remains the same upon elimination of fees. However, the elimination of fees may mean that the airline sells more seats and sells them earlier as the financial risks to the customer are reduced and thus revenue may increases.

I am not sure what US Airways policy is but I can say they waived both my 7 year old son’s change fee and mine when he was in the hospital for two weeks with severe pneumonia and we had to change our plans. I did not have to bring it up to a supervisor or another person, the agent I spoke to handled it quickly and efficiently. All I had to provide was the hospital’s name, address and the doctor in charge of my son’s care. I was surprised and very pleased as that saved me $500 and although it was a lot, I did not object to paying the additional $1000 for the difference in price for the new tickets.

I noticed that you’ve written about reservation change fees and attempts at getting waivers for health, or bereavement.Presently,
we are trying to get a fee waiver for my daughter Caroline who wants to stay an
extra day so that she can attend a memorial service. It was her intent to visit as soon as possible, as Evan was told he had 2-3 months to live because of a brain tumor that couldn’t be completely removed during surgery (amazingly it was benign, but still killed him). She had just started her second semester at UNM and, immediately on getting the prognosis, we booked the earliest flight she could reasonably take, so she could come back home and spend some time with him. Unfortunately, within less than two weeks after his surgery he began having seizures and died. Now the airlines wants to charge $150 to change her ticket from a Sunday return to a Monday return (less than 20 extra hours) which will allow her to attend Evan’s memorial and say the goodbyes she didn’t get to do in person. So far, US AIRWAYS won’t budge on this. What gets me, almost as much as their complete lack of compassion, is that usually, fares are less for travel when you stay over Sunday night! How brutal and how totally absurd! But their lack of compassion will cost them as well as us: We and our daughter will be making trips back and forth for the next 3 1/2 years and though I know pretty much all airlines are just as inhumane, it was US AIRWAYS that did this us, so should they fail to show that there is even a glimmer of humanity in their organization, we WILL NOT use US AIRWAYS for any of those flights, or any others …  EVER!

I have a letter from the ER doc on the Hospital stationary who saw yesterday (was flying out this morning but had my first gout flare up ever yesterday – I can’t even put on a sock it’s so painful. US AIRWAYS says they never refund the 150 change ticket fee for “personal reasons” . The thing is they always overbook so bet they filled the seat. Sounds like double dipping. Was cheaper to just book a flight than to pay the ticket change fee and use the old ticket as a credit toward the new. US Airways packs you in worse than any airline I’ve traveled. I fly with my service dog and it was brutal having him by my feet. Thankfully the person I sat beside was a dog lover.