United Airlines Introduces no change fees and free same day stand by for flights within the U.S.

Gives a better reason to skip the basic economy option.

https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/change-fee.html

 

American has similar policies now, but they have not made them permanent yet as this United PR indicates.

 

Just saw this, about damn time is my thinking. SW has been doing this forever, perhaps the other airlines will figure it out that charging someone what's tantamount to the cost of a full ticket for changing a flight is a shitty business move, now more than ever.

I don't applaud United here but rather, my thinking is finally.

 

For the past few years revenue from change fees and luggage fees for most major airlines have probably exceeded profit margins on ticket cost. They have made hundreds of millions of dollars off of these fees. Now with Covid19 they are being forced to be flexible to lure travelers back. Give it a a year post Covid and the old rules will return.

 

Sounds good and 1,000% against all that UA seems to stand for.

But, if this is true, and they keep it - good job.

 

Expect AA and Delta to follow suit. When one of them makes a big move like this, the others usually fall in line.

 

SW does not have free standby. You have to pay any difference in fare. Assuming things get back to normal, same day fares are very high. They will let you on free standby if your original flight is delayed or messed up.

 

Regardless you can cancel any other day, which until now, nobody else has done and they're only doing so because they need to for business reasons. SW has been the most flexible airline by far, I really can't see an argument to the contrary if we're being objective. Do they have a weird boarding process and no first class? Sure, but again, that argument isn't applicable to flexibility insofar as no change fees which, again, only they've had until now.

 

I like how the emphasize this is a permanent change. Yeah until they make the next permanent change

 

Exactly, and it's like they're doing us a favor to getting up with the times. Intellectually dishonest is how I would phrase this, and that's putting it mildly.

 

And they did.

 

Delta has just followed suit and announced they are permanently eliminating change fees.

 

Amazing......being applauded as if they have come out with a new program which is customer friendly that was not possible before. Rather, the market will no longer tolerate the abuse. So to maintain the skies as “friendly” we submit the following changes.....

 

AA/UA/DL had change fees because businesses paid a lot of them. As long as business travel is dead, it makes sense to dial them back to compete with Southwest for leisure travel. If we go back to a world where they make profits by gouging Fortune 500 employers in their Fortress hubs, don't be surprised if standby and change fees come back.

I do note that no change fees on basic economy means YMMV - you need to book a true economy ticket if you want to take advantage of this.

AA was more honest - they didn't say permanent. Also, be careful - I believe only AA is refunding a price drop as travel credit the way Southwest does, i.e. if you book a $200 ticket and rebook into a $150 ticket, United and Delta aren't giving refunds.

As a business traveler, if you don't have status, same day standby is a game changer. I have been wondering if someone would offer that.

 

It's probably the most friendly day for leisure travelers in decades. These guys run a lot of flights and routes. AA even extended these policies into Mexico and the Caribbean, and I believe they are including international in the standby rules.

I'm not trying to shill for AA, but they really blew UA and DL out of the water.

 

The big airlines make their cash by selling miles to CC partners and by making huge margins at their hubs. Delta's Atlanta hub and American's Dallas hub are so, so much more meaningful than these fees are.

 

Now if casinos permanently eliminated resort fees...LOL sorry I had to say it! (Please take this jokingly and not as the beginning of a heated discussion, trying to get a few laughs this morning).