I had booked my flight from Cape Town to Seattle back at the end of December. I wanted to experience Etihad’s first class product which I would be doing from AUH (Abu Dhabi) to Los Angeles. I would also be seated in Business class from JNB (Johannesburg) to AUH, which is a 9 hour flight. What I REALLY wanted was to experience Emirates A380 first class product, which has the shower in it. The problem was that Alaska Airlines was not showing any Emirates first class availability after March at the time of the AA/Etihad booking. Therefore, as a plan B, I booked the Etihad flight using 135K AA miles per person (45K business from JNB-AUH and then 90K first class from AUH-LAX-SEA). Well to make a long story short and which I will explain in more detail later, I was able to book the Alaska/Emirates flight last night, and so now I wanted to cancel my AA/Etihad award.
Schedule Change
When I had booked that AA flight, I knew that because it was so far out (6 months), that I had a high probability of a schedule change, which I could then argue with the phone rep to cancel my award for free. This doesn’t always work and so I was prepared to pay the $150 fee (+$25 for wife) to redeposit my miles. Well, sure enough, I randomly logged into my account last month and saw that there indeed was a reschedule change. I didn’t look very closely at it, but I noticed that my flight from Johannesburg to Abu Dhabi was now 30 minutes earlier and so my connection time in Johannesburg went from 90 minutes to 60 minutes. I was now trying to figure out the best excuse to say why I should get a free cancellation due to this short connection time. I was going to say my wife has OCD and needed a 90 minute connection. That was the excuse I was going to go with.
This morning, when I went to double check the change once again, I noticed my LAX-SEA flight got pushed up 45 minutes. My original itinerary had a 2:20 hrs connection in LAX, but now that got reduced to 1:35 hrs. With a little help from Flyertalk, it turns out the minimum connection time in LAX for an international to domestic transfer is 2 hours. My new itinerary now had an ILLEGAL connection. Before I called though, I checked Alaska’s web site to see what the later flights were. There was a flight an hour later, but it had no First Class availability. I wasn’t sure if AA could “force” me on to that flight. Then there was another flight 3 hours later, which I knew I could easily argue would NOT work out for me. Armed with this information, I was ready to make the call.
Making the Call
When I called AA, I gave the lady my record locator number and told her there was a problem with my new schedule. She then asked what it was. I was surprised she didn’t already know; you would think their computers would have alerted them. Anyway, I told her that there was a schedule change that gave me an illegal connection in LAX. She noticed it and told me she could put me on a later flight. I started to give her my excuse, “That’s not going to work for me. My friend is watching my dog and I need to pick him up by 8pm because he….” She cut me off right there and told me she could either change or cancel it for free. I was kinda sad I couldn’t use my great excuse that I came up with, but I got what I wanted anyway. She proceeded to refund my payment and my miles back to my account.
Lessons Learned
If you are booking reservations 6+ months out, there is a high likelihood that there will be some minor schedule changes to your itinerary that you could use as an excuse to cancel your award for free. I don’t know if my first excuse of the 90 minute to 60 minute connection time OCD excuse would have worked, but the illegal connection in LAX definitely was a valid excuse. I did a little research and it turns out if your flight has changed by 2 hours or more, you should be able to change or cancel for free. I’ve heard of people being able to cancel for free due to a 5 minute schedule change. I think that was in the past when airlines weren’t so fee-heavy, but it’s definitely more of an art than a science. So, be nice to the person on the phone and cry if you have to, and maybe you’ll get your reservation changed or cancelled for free.
Had a good experience with American Airlines – they changed my flight schedule times for my February trip to ski in Lake Tahoe that would have wrecked two ski days into travel-only days – getting into Reno 2-1/2 hours later and leaving to fly home 5 hours earlier. Before calling, I pulled their schedule of available flights, found the best incoming & return flights, and then proposed the same to the agent. Without hesitation, the agent re-booked me on the better flights that are actually slightly-better times than what I had originally-booked. Fortunately, I didn’t have to argue the case of trying to find a comparable flight in the same fare bucket as my original ticket. Apparently when flight times involve unscheduled changes that are measured in hours, not minutes, then this scenario gives customers a very viable bargaining chip – especially if you have already done your homework in-advance and can bring solutions to the table, in the form of alternative flights during times that work for you.