Episode 7: 5 Lessons & 3 Stories on How to Cancel a Flight Without Losing Money: Part 1
Hi travel besties and welcome to another episode of The Just Book It Podcast. Today we are diving headfirst and talking about how to cancel a flight without losing any money! This is one of those episodes that listening now doesn’t apply to your life but it’s going to save you down the line. You are not going to want to miss my 5 lessons for canceling a flight without losing money. I mean take it from the travel queen THAT KEEPS NEEDING TO CANCEL TRIPS. I’m high-key over it, but I learned a lot along the way. Since we hate gatekeeping, I’m spilling all of the tea. Now obviously we don’t book trips with the intention of canceling them, but, if the pandemic, its other variants, and this current war in Ukraine has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is guaranteed. Ultimately, when it’s not safe to travel, it’s not worth putting your life at risk, point-blank.
Now airlines, I hate to say it, do not care about your situation.
Now airlines, I hate to say it, do not care about your situation. They don’t care if someone in your family got sick, they don’t care if you broke your leg and can’t walk, and unfortunately, they didn’t sympathize with my reasoning for canceling my trip to Finland and Sweden due to ww3. To emphasize how airline workers are emotionally numb, let’s go back to when I was 8 years old. We’re going on a tangent but trust me, it’s worth it.
Airline Workers Are Emotionally Numb: Missing Flights Edition
When I was eight years old, my family and I went to Disney World. We had such a fun trip and yada yada, now it’s time to go back home. My family likes to plan pretty much every second of the day so in the rental car back to the airport, we all slept except for my Grandma who was driving. We wake up about thirty minutes later and we are driving I kid you not through orange groves. We go, “Grandma are you sure this is the right way to the airport”. Reluctant to respond, she dismisses us saying, “Oh yes, everything is fine, go back to sleep”. Let the record be clear that everything was not fine. To say the least, the next 10 minutes were pivotal in our journey back to NYC. Unfortunately, nothing about airport security is easy and we ended up missing our flight. My grandma made up this whole sob story and the workers looked at her dead in the eye and said “you missed your flight”. It’s definitely something to laugh at years later, but at the moment we were so annoyed!! For the cherry on top of it all, when we went to Hawaii, we almost missed our flight again buying all of the pineapples at the airport store. I mean a flight from Florida to NYC is pretty easy to get, but could you imagine if we missed the flight to Hawaii? I literally cannot imagine how that would have gone down. The airline workers definitely would have had no sympathy for us.
Bottom line, airline workers face these sob stories every day and they don’t buy them so we need to make sure that we aren’t put in a situation where we have to depend on someone’s kindness. At the end of the day, it’s a business and if they let everyone book and cancel as they please, they wouldn’t be in business. Each time I called the airline companies, they said that they do not have a refund policy and that there was no way to give a refund. So the lesson here is to always have a Plan B because flights no matter how much you pay for them, are still hard-earned money and it’s not worth losing.
“Let this be my formal statement that moving forward I will not continue to make the same mistake time and time again.”
Since I am the travel queen and ironically my trips keep getting canceled, you would think after the first or second time I would learn my lesson. Let this be my formal statement that moving forward I will not continue to make the same mistake time and time again. Considering this has happened I kid you not four times in the span of two years, I’m racking up travel credit on airlines and lacking the memories and adventures. With that said, I’m going to share my experiences and the lessons I have learned from each of them and hopefully, you can learn from my mistakes! To preface this, each time, I have been lucky and have gotten flight credit, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Ready to get into it? Let’s do this…
Canceling Trip Sagas
Canceled Trip #1 Study Abroad, Spain 2020 aka The Emergence of the Alpha Wave of Miss Rona
This was the first flight that I had to cancel and obviously, it wasn’t just a cancellation, it was more so I needed to get an earlier flight out of Spain because they were closing borders. To put it in the most dramatic way possible, I was fleeing the country. In 72 hours I went from leaving Spain on Tuesday to leaving Monday afternoon to leaving Sunday. Getting out of Spain was nothing short of a shit show. Thinking about that time, I just get so upset honestly (always be honest) because I knew I was missing out on a trip of a lifetime that I was planning for five years. Now nobody has expected the pandemic to pan out the way that it did so buying flight insurance and paying the extra amount to be able to change the flight did not even cross my mind. What made this that much worse was that everyone was trying to get out of the country so the airlines’ websites were crashing and since people were trying to secure flights, they were booking flights and then securing earlier ones without canceling the later flight so it looked like flights were completely booked when in reality, they weren’t full at all. Thank god my aunt is a travel agent and helped me find a flight out of Spain. To say the least, I cried a lot. Thankfully, I ended up getting an earlier flight and my school was nice enough to give us a refund so I saved my family over $1,000. Since it was such a mess getting out of there, I definitely lost out on money with this one, but given the circumstances, I had to choose my battles and let it go.
Canceled Trip # 2: Spain Part 2: You Would Have Thought. Thanks, Miss Delta
So over a year and a half of fleeing the country, I promised my friends in Spain I would visit them, and well it was finally happening. Even though I only spent two months in Spain, I felt and still feel so connected to the country, the culture, and the friends that I made there. I mean during quarantine, I spoke with them so much, and staying in contact with them has helped me learn the language better, improve my accent, and learn their favorite TV shows and songs. When I tell you I was SO EXCITED! I was so excited! I was able to take off from work and make this huge trip happen. I mean I was a ball of sunshine!! I ended up finding $492 round trip flights, but unfortunately waited too long and ended up scoring the $678 flights instead. A week later, the flights went back down to $492. I literally hate the airline industry and how they do us dirty so much!! Anywho, Miss Delta had other plans, and given that my friends there didn’t have the vaccine and how the rollout was much slower than in the US, COVID cases were rising and it wasn’t going to be the trip that I had wanted so I just decided to cancel the trip. This leads us to our first lesson, ready, let’s do this!
Lesson #1: BUY AIRPLANE TICKETS DIRECTLY FROM THE WEBSITE! Yes, you heard me do not buy from Expedia. I don’t care how much cheaper it is, do not do it!! Unfortunately, if you buy a flight from a third-party website, the airlines cannot do anything and you have to go through them which is 10000x harder. Even if you’re stubborn and still call the airlines, the airlines cannot help you. I never booked through Expedia, but with the whole fleeing the country thing, I had friends who booked through a third party (I think it was Expedia) and it made their life so difficult and they weren’t able to cancel it or get flight credit. This was the one time I didn’t book with the airline, and I LUCKED OUT….. let’s go
Canceled Trip #3. Yellowstone With My Ex: Oh God LMAOO
So I had planned a trip with my ex to go to Yellowstone for his birthday and LOL we aren’t together anymore. I had booked it through my travel credit card and thank luckily the flight had changed the times, but like 5 minutes, but that’s all I needed to cancel it. When the flight itself changes, its grounds for an immediate refund, not even flight credit. They changed the flight- that’s on them! All I needed to do was call the credit card company, the one and only Capital One, and BAMM the refund was issued.
At the time, he didn’t even pay me for the flight yet so it was as awkward as it sounds. I needed my money back because literally fuck him. If you needed a sign to leave a horrible relationship regardless of the “future” you have panned, FUCK IT!! This is your sign to not be afraid to break up and end a relationship even when you have trips planned in the future. There was no way I was staying with him just to go to a national park with him, not after how he treated me. Queens, you deserve better. Even if the trip was planned and everything, THERE IS ALWAYS A WAY to get your money back or even some kind of credit!!
So now that we established the first ground rules and I swear if you guys do this, I’m just going to start praying for you because the chances of them helping you are slim to NONE!! My situation was super rare, so definitely do not risk it!! This next lesson is unfortunately something that I am still learning and NEED to do because I have lucked out way too many times.
Lesson #2: Do Not Buy Basic Economy Tickets: They do not protect you in case there is an emergency and you need to cancel. Now ROOKIE mistake, I didn’t buy the next level ticket multiple times and almost lost EVERYTHING. When you opt for the Basic Economy ticket, you’re getting the least amount of benefits. I try to always secure a free carry-on, but Basic economy tickets do not allow flight changes. It’s virtually impossible and in case of an emergency, it’s not worth losing out on your hard-earned money. Instead, if you opt for the next tier, you get the chance to get flight credit which of course isn’t money but it’s allowing you to get your next flight for a discount for what you had paid, which isn’t bad at all!!
So say you just bought Basic Economy tickets and you have no way of canceling, what happens now??? Lessons #3-7
The first thing you have to do is call the airline directly. I had called United Airlines three times, each waiting 3 hours and they kept telling me that they were not able to help me. I refused to accept that answer. Sorry not sorry, but i don’t go down without a fight.
Lesson #3: Opt for the Callback Option: It Saves So Much Time. I used to think that the callback option just puts you further down the list and waiting on the regular line was better. ALERT, just do the callback option! You don’t have to worry about accidentally hanging up, losing battery, or not hearing the representative talk. I mean let’s talk about it, that music is god awful and so boring!! I always get nervous that I am going to miss them and they will hang up!
Lesson #4: Call At the Right Time. It just doesn’t make sense to call on a day that you are super busy. Most likely, you’re going to have to hang up and keep redialing and keep waiting. I worked from home so it wasn’t a big deal and let me tell you, they called right as the meeting had started and I couldn’t answer so that hurt inside, but it’s better to just call again and not have to worry.
Lesson #5: Am I Actually On The Callback List & How Much Time Is Left? Here is how to check. This has happened to me WAYYYY too many times and I figured out how to find out. If you’re ever in this situation, all you need to do is go through the motions of calling again and if you’re in the callback line, they will say something along the lines of “Oh it looks like you are already in line, you have about 30 minutes until it is your turn” and then you just hang up!
Since the original video was over 40 minutes, long, I felt as though that was TOO long to post and I don’t know if I would be able to listen o 40 minutes of me speaking either so this is the end of part 2. I hope these tips were useful and that you use them the next time that you book a trip. To reiterate that sometimes, canceling is inevitable and it would have been impossible to predict it so don’t be hard on yourself if you keep trying to book trips and they don’t work out! It will work out eventually!!! I promise you! Take it from me!! As upset as I am that things are not going to plan, we can’t give up!!
As always if you have any future podcast ideas, LET A GIRL KNOW!! I have a bunch already so I would love to continue that list and talk about content YOU are interested in! If you liked what you heard, there is more where that came from. Check out my other podcast episodes, my blog, and Instagram, The Brooklynite Abroad, where I am constantly updating you guys with fun and exciting NYC and adventures around the globe! As always, even when things seem as though they aren’t working out, we can’t let it stop us. Life is too short to not experience life to the fullest so with that said JUST BOOK IT!!! Bye everyone, see you next episode!
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