Introduction
I think most people know that if your cash or award flight schedule changes for more than 2 hours, you can usually get it cancelled for free. Sometimes you can cancel it for free if the change was fewer than 2 hours if you are a sweet talker. Anyway, I had booked a JFK to Pensacola AA award flight for this coming October way back in December 2015 (yes, I book award flights 10 months out, especially with AA.) There was a schedule change to my flight, but I didn’t want to cancel it since I actually needed to fly on it. Here’s my story.
Schedule Change
I may be the only person this happens to, but I don’t get email notifications when my flight changes from AA. I’m not sure why that is; my email is correct. Anyhow, this was my original flight:
That got changed to this:
As you can see, I’m departing NYC and arriving into Pensacola 5+ hrs later. Well, that’s not what I wanted.
Calling up AA
Before I called up AA, I did some research to see what other flights could get me down to Pensacola that was similar to my original itinerary, and I saw one departing out of JFK that would work. However, there was no award availability for that flight. A reader told me that AA should be able to open up inventory since the airport is in the same city.
So I called up AA. Told them my original flight had me landing at 11AM and this new one would not work for me. I told her that I saw one flying out of JFK at 6:00AM that would get me in at the same time. She then looked on her computer and saw an LGA flight out at 6:15AM that would get me in at the same time. Quick aside here – I think it’s BS that AA would change my itinerary to the later flight instead of rebooking me on this new LGA flight that is more similar to my original itinerary.
Anyhow, I wasn’t too familiar with New York, and so I asked her which airport would be better to fly out of at 6:00AM – whether LGA or JFK was closer to Manhattan. She then said she preferred LGA so we went with that. After a few minutes of being on hold, she told me she had put in the request to change me to the new 6:15AM flight and I would get a response within 24 hours, which I did over email. This is my new flight:
Lessons Learned
It’s good to know that if your flight has a major schedule change (>2 hrs,) the airlines can rebook you on another flight that is similar to your original itinerary, even if there isn’t award space available. Of course I wouldn’t have been able to change it to fly out of Boston or an airport in another city. This was a unique situation where I had multiple options flying out of New York. I’m sure San Francisco and Oakland flyers would be able to do the same. Of course I could have also gotten a free cancel if I had found a better option, but I thought it was worth the 12.5K AA miles for this one-way ~$200 flight.
I bought a paid ticket to Miami for this November and the change is more than two hours. How long before the flight actually takes off can I cancel or switch the flight to a different time on the same day? My strategy is to wait for the time I want and for a lower price since I know prices move all over the map for WAS to MIA. If I find the right priced flight should I book a new one then cancel the old or call and also request the price difference and flight?
I’m not sure about how long before you can cancel for free, but I could imagine an old person with no email wouldn’t know about the flight change until a few hours before (and they could possibly call to cancel to free, but I haven’t heard any examples of this happening.)
It shouldn’t matter about the price difference. Just call now and pick the right date and time. Doesn’t matter if the one you want has gone up in price, as long as that new flight is closer to your original departure time, they should let you change for free.
Vinh is right, it doesn’t matter what the price difference is, which means if the new flight’s current price is higher, you just scored a great deal.
I got to do a free change and even changed the origin (changed origin from SFO to BOS!) and destination (changed from FLL to MIA) for a 20 minute schedule change lol. I’m not sure if they’re always this nice.
jigga what? but that was on B6 and not a legacy carrier like AA right?
It was AA haha; didn’t know B6 did free schedule changes too
You sweet talker you.
LGA is definitely the much better airport to fly out of if staying in Manhattan. Although the airport is junk the Centurion lounge isn’t too bad (but it is before security and security there blows!).
Good to know. Plus I’m close to Flushing and was able to use a free night at the Hyatt Place there. Better than the Sheraton at JFK I was looking at.
I have actually been thinking of staying there with my free night after a Mets game. That is a quick ride to LGA. I think it is actually surrounded by a little china town which I know you will like. You’ll have to do a post on the stay!
Actually it’s a huge Chinatown. Huuuge. Also, there is a fantastic place to get soup dumplings around the corner from the Hyatt. Nan Xiang. Thank me later.
Better than Din Tai Fung?
Ehhh, I had DTF in Singapore. It didn’t blow me away but maybe it’s not a good location. I’d go with Nan Xiang, but I might be biased since it was where I had my revelation. Anyway, DTF won’t be around the corner from Hyatt 🙂
Vinh, sorry to bring it to you, ppl were walking on highway to get into lga, this happened yesterday. So yeah, leave early for that place. Amex centurion is nice, small but nice