nonrefundable airline tickets, help!

Montegut
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:06:10 +0000

Just updating this post, as I have talked to the airline, and want to post this so others can learn from my mistake.

As an above poster stated, the exchange fee for EACH TICKET FOR EACH PERSON IS $150. Since my tickets cost less than this each, the tickets are thrown away. So, I’ll have to eat the $600.

But in all humility, I will share some stupid mistakes I made so others can learn from them.

In trying to get the best times, I booked my up and coming back tickets as separate tickets. Had I booked them as roundtrip tickets, my tickets would be worth 200 bucks, so I would have at least a 50 dollar credit toward future travel for a year. True, I did not book the flights separately to save a few dollars. I was working with already purchased tickets one way and trying to work things out logistically, as the school we were trying to visit is very far away and had very limited flights available from our region. It was very difficult to get connecting flights that were spaced far enough apart to give us a reasonable chance of making our connection. In a previous visit to this school, we had actually missed a connection and were stuck in a hotel that we had to pay for for an extra day.

I have booked my flights to the full scholarship competition through a refundable airline, which actually has many flights to the new school, and if we can’t go, at least I know I’ll get my money back on these tickets.

So, learn from my mistake. I know sometimes it can’t be avoided. Sometimes the only flights you can get are from a nonrefundable airline. But keep this in mind, find out first what the cancellation policies are and book your flights as a round trip, not separately, to increase your chance of having some credit should your plans change.

Take care and good luck to all of you in the college process.