Weekend survey: When should an airline refund your nonrefundable ticket?

Rules are meant to be broken, right? Well, kinda. We know that norefundable airline tickets aren’t necessarily totally nonrefundable. Some airlines, for example, refund tickets to the estate of dead passengers.

Question is, when should airline refund their nonrefundable tickets? Here are the results of the survey.

I’d also like your thoughts on the subject. When is it appropriate for an airline to lift its own rules? When should it refuse?

Do you have any stories about nonrefundable tickets, and an airline either bending a rule or throwing the book in your face? Send me an email.

  • Eric

    Shouldn’t all airlines refund a ticket for a deceased passenger? If not, I wonder what the airline would do if you showed up with your uncle, let’s call him “Bernie” to fly to Florida for a weekend at the beach.

  • Tom

    The airlines should make the distinction between refundable and nonrefundable tickets clearer. Obviously, many people buy nonrefundable tickets and then wonder why they can’t get a refund. Perhaps, nonrefundable tickets should only be made available to people who travel frequently and have familiarized themselves with the rules. People who travel infrequently could be required to buy refundable tickets until they can show they understand the rules.

  • David Z

    People who travel infrequently could be required to buy refundable tickets until they can show they understand the rules.

    That’s what the checkbox beside the “I have read the rules and understood them” is for. While I’ve read of few U.S. court decisions doing away with that for other reasons, I’ve also seen those (and more) that upheld such.

  • Ahmei

    In addition to the listed reasons in the survey (minus the obvious one), tickets should be refunded when the ticket can be re-sold. I’ve never really understood the non-transerable portion if you inform the necessary people of the change.