When booking travel, there are times when it makes sense to have backup plans. Maybe, for example, you absolutely have to make it to the departure city for that expensive cruise you bought. Or, maybe you’ll lose your “best man” title if you don’t make it in time for your best friend’s wedding. Or, perhaps, you took advantage of a great flight deal, but you need a positioning flight to get you to the starting airport. Whatever the reason, it can make sense to book multiple flights with different carriers — just in case.
I was in a situation recently where I came close to using my backup flight booking. For the Passing the GUC trip I’m doing with Nick (see this post for details), I had to get from Detroit to Washington Dulles airport in time for our 6:25pm Air France flight to Paris. My primary positioning flight was a late morning flight on Delta. My backup booking was an early afternoon flight on United. I booked both flights with miles. The idea was that if the Delta flight was cancelled for some reason, I’d still be able to get there in time thanks to the United flight. In reality, I almost needed that backup flight for a different reason: As of late afternoon on Sunday, my COVID test results hadn’t yet come in. Our destination (Dubai) required a negative PCR test within 72 hours of our flight to Dubai. For that reason, I waited until Saturday to take the test and I hoped that it would come back quickly. When it still hadn’t appeared by Sunday afternoon, I started making alternate plans: I could get a rapid PCR test Monday morning. That would cause me to miss the Delta flight, but I could still make it onto the United flight. It turned out not to be an issue after all — the test results came in at 7pm Sunday evening, but it was great to have the alternative flight “in my pocket” so to speak. At the airport, once I was confident that the Delta flight was really going to fly, I cancelled my United flight and got my miles back (more on the process for cancelling United flights can be found later in this post).
Free Cancellations
It used to be the case that Southwest was the best airline with which to book “just in case” flights because they have always offered free cancellations. With flights booked with points, the flights are really fully refundable: when you cancel you get back the taxes paid and your points. With flights booked with cash, you get back a travel voucher that is good for a year. So, I don’t think of cash reservations as fully refundable given that the credits are “use it or lose it”.
In the past year, Southwest has lost its advantage. Except for some low cost carriers, all U.S. based airlines now offer similar cancellation policies. AA, Alaska, Delta, JetBlue, and United all now allow free cancellations on most routes (except for basic economy tickets). And just like Southwest, award tickets are fully refundable whereas paid ticket cancellations result in a 1 year voucher. For full details, see this post: Airline Change Fee Quick Reference Chart.
United has a minor “gotcha” baked into their award ticket rules. Cancelling a United award ticket is free only if the flight is more than 30 days away. Luckily there’s a simple work-around: While award cancellations are free only 30 days or more out, flight light changes are free anytime. So, it’s possible to change your ticket to a date more than 30 days away and then it becomes freely cancellable.
Tips for backup flight bookings
- Ensure free cancellations: Book backup flights with carriers that offer free cancellations. These include: AA, Alaska, Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, and United.
- Make your backup flight fully refundable:
- If you already have flight credits from previous cancellations with a given airline, then you’re safe to use those funds to book backup flights. When you cancel, you’ll simply get back those same funds (with the same expiration date).
- If you have points/miles with a given airline that offers free cancellations, then using those points/miles to book award flights is a great way to go since it results in fully refundable bookings.
- Don’t forget to cancel! Some airlines require that you cancel before the flight’s scheduled departure in order to get a refund. For example, Southwest requires cancelling at least 10 minutes before your scheduled departure. I like to use Gmail’s “schedule send” feature to send myself a reminder to cancel a couple of hours before the back-up flight.
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According to the table in the other post Hawaiian has free changes but not free cancellations.
Good catch. I removed them from the list of “friendlies”. Thanks!
Great tip for United! I booked ORD-KEF-ORD this summer when it was on discount for 20k I think, but I made two mistakes. Booked the wrong date going there, and really should have booked it as two one-ways. In the end, I flew LH J to KEF, so it was arguably better than UA Y, although not very direct.
I didn’t realize rescheduling would work last minute, but I think the trip was re-pricing anyway. Let’s hope UA doesn’t catch on. Does it have to be an even exchange within the 30 day period?
Finally, Nick has some good tips for using reminders in Google: https://frequentmiler.com/a-system-for-reminding-myself-to-use-credits-and-benefits/
Did this recently. Purchased a “fully refundable to original form of purchase” ticket on Delta. A few days before my flight an AA web special became available. My plan was to wait until I was sure the AA flight would go (having experienced several cancellations on AA recently). When it was clear that things looked like a “go” for the AA flight I tried to cancel the Delta flight on the app and also logged into Delta.com. The ability to do this disappears as the ticket comes under “airport control” a few hours before the flight. So unable to cancel and unable to get through to Delta by phone or chat feature. Very stressful as I was not sure if I was completely out what I paid for the Delta ticket as I boarded the AA flight (which I had to do since I had checked luggage). Now the Delta ticket value shows as a eCredit on my account. I have requested a refund to original form of purchase but it will likely be several weeks to see if that happens.
Yeah, this is so frustrating as some airlines seem to use really poor IT systems, or design them to be awful. Southwest might be a better option as they allow a full refund online even if you’re checked in, and even have a prompt to delete your boarding pass automatically during the cancelation/refund process. Maybe the FM team can give tips on how well this works with UA, AA, etc. It’s not clear whether Greg had actually checked in to his UA flight, but he may not have to avoid any hassles canceling the check-in in order to reschedule online easily. Just be aware of check-in cut-off times tho.
Don’t know why Matthew’s comment was downvoted – this seems like an important topic. I, too, wonder if I should check-in to my backup positioning flight (AA bakcup for a Delta)
Hi, Matt. So I’ve since experimented a bit and with AA you can cancel after getting a BP. Sometimes the app gives an error, but the social media team have always been able to sort it out for me.
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