A benefit of the epidemic was the implementation of a no-change-fee policy by airlines.
You can now change or cancel your flights on the majority of the major U.S. airlines without having to pay the annoying $200 (or more) fee thanks to this increased flexibility.
If you move to a more expensive ticket, you're still responsible for any additional fare differences; but, as long as you didn't reserve a basic economy ticket, you won't have to worry about paying an additional change charge on top of that potential fare difference.
On the other hand, if you decide to change to a less expensive flight, you'll often get a credit for the cost difference. In reality, this might be a really good strategy to make sure you receive the best deal on your next travels.
Many major U.S. airlines let you call in and ask for your ticket to be repriced at the current (lower) selling fare if you notice that an upcoming flight's price drops. Once that's done, you'll typically get a future travel voucher for the price difference that you can use within a year.
However, American Airlines took a significant step on Monday to stop this behavior, particularly for power users. American Airlines, based in Fort Worth, has just modified the conditions of carriage agreement that controls all travel on the airline to forbid "automated reshopping" that is carried out by "you, or your agent, or through an authorized third party."
When American defines "automated reshopping," they say it is "the use of a robotic or automated process of re-booking a ticket for the same passenger and itinerary on American with the purpose of taking advantage of a reduced fare where there is no change fee payable to American for the administrative costs of the re-booking."
However, some online travel agencies have recently integrated this kind of automated rebooking feature into their suite of tools, and I'm sure other companies are planning to add such an integration in the future. Professional-level flyers may write their own computer programming to automate this process.
For instance, Itilite, a business travel service, provides a "flight price re-shop" guarantee that automatically rebooks the same flight at a lower price when prices drop.
With American's revised conditions of carriage, Itilite's feature would appear to be a prohibited booking practice, which could result in ticket cancellation, refusal of transportation, a charge for the value of the fare difference, and other penalties that American lists on its website.
American stated that both travel agencies and clients were informed of this policy amendment.
"On May 1, we amended our governing travel agency agreements and added a clause outlawing the practice of automated reshopping. We revised our conditions of carriage to comply with the GTAA after that adjustment, American said.
I personally use Google Flights to manually monitor the cost of my impending flights. Every time the fare for a tracked flight changes, the saved flights feature of the search engine sends me an email.
When that happens, I usually give the airline a call to rebook the flight and get a credit. You will only be given a future travel voucher as a result of this process (unless you book a refundable fare).
American appears to still be allowing this sort of action; the airline is only cracking down (for the time being) on automatic rebooking.
It would be fascinating to see how these regulations alter, particularly given that the no-change-fee announcements were primarily touted as "permanent."
Are clever travelers who frequently rebook flights to take advantage of lower tickets costing American Airlines money? It's definitely a possibility, and United looked to be concerned about it after eliminating its own change costs.
United is well known for failing to give vouchers when moving to less expensive prices at the start of the pandemic. The Chicago-based carrier reversed course on this significant gotcha in April 2021, which brought about a change.
Nevertheless, United is still on the lookout for people who try to take advantage of the system, and its recently revised contract of carriage document no longer permits passengers to pre-book delayed flights in order to receive compensation. The airline has also modified its mistake-fare policy.
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