airline schedule changes

With the announcement that American Airlines is cutting 80 flights a day, suddenly, the rest of the world has become aware of what professional travel advisors have been experiencing for months: The industry is simply not prepared for the resumption of travel.

It’s long been a fact that airlines reserve the right to change their schedules if and when their operations require. When the 737Max was grounded a couple of years ago, for example, suddenly airlines with a significant number of those aircraft in their fleet had to redeploy other planes to new routes, in order to keep their operations more-or-less intact. But other flights needed to be canceled.

That meant that people who had booked flights with a two hour layover suddenly had a 6 hour layover. Or people who had direct flights now had to connect. Some people had to depart or arrive at times that were extraordinarily inconvenient.

Well, the same thing is happening again, now that people have suddenly become comfortable with traveling, and the airlines are scrambling to meet demand, adding flights, bringing back crew and reservations agents from furlough, and trying to figure out which routes will need the greatest number of seats.

So, here’s a little peek behind the curtain, so that you can know what to expect when you book an airline ticket right now:

• You’re going to have to live with minor schedule changes. If your flights have only changed by a few minutes in one direction or another, you won’t be able to cancel and get a full refund.

• Major schedule changes may make your ticket refundable. If the change is significant, according to the airline’s rules, you may be able to get a refund on a non-refundable ticket.

• Airlines have permanently waived change fees. This is maybe the only good thing that happened in the travel industry during the pandemic. You can now preserve the value of your ticket and make changes with only paying a difference in fares.

• Airline e-tickets have an expiration date. Even though you can change your ticket while only paying a fare difference, those tickets will expire after a period of time.

• We may need a “waiver” from the airline to change your routing. We recently had a client who’s departure from South Dakota to New York was moved from 3 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. There were no flights that connected in Chicago on the schedule at times that would work for him, so we found a better routing through Charlotte. But that meant that we had to sit on hold with the airline to get a waiver of the fare rules to make certain that we could change him to the new flights.

• We charge fees for air-only bookings. If you want us to book your ticket for you, we’re happy to do that. But airlines mostly stopped paying commission to travel advisors decades ago, so, in order to administer those tickets (and sit on hold with the airlines so you don’t have to), we charge nominal fees for issuing tickets.

• There’s no such thing as a “deal” on airfare. It doesn’t pay to wait for a lower fare. Your travel advisor can’t get your baggage fees waived, or make your advance seat assignments free. We can find the lowest fares for you more quickly, but we don’t have a magic want to make the airlines give you a bargain.

Of course, we’ve said before that we can often find value when we bundle your flights with a hotel stay or a tour or cruise, but those flight changes are going to happen no matter what.

Our best advice: book your flights early, when airfare is low, and be prepared to be flexible in dealing with airline schedule changes. If you book a flight now for September, those flights will change several times over the course of the next few months. It doesn’t make sense to spend more money to leave an hour later, when your flight times are going to change anyway. Book the fare that works for you on the routing that seems to be a good fit. And then be prepared for that to change.

Of course, we’re more than happy to sort through the options for you. If you’re ready to travel, we’re ready to book your next trip!