Alaska Airlines Now Makes You Cancel And Rebook To Get A Lower Fare—But May Not Let You Pay With Your Credit

When the pandemic emptied planes, airlines needed customers to feel comfortable buying tickets again. Airlines waived change fees. Then on August 30, 2020, United announced that domestic change fees were going away “permanently”, excluding basic economy. Alaska followed two days later, dropping its $125 change fee for tickets other than Saver fares. This created an opportunity to buy tickets, but reprice them lower if fares dropped. That gave customers the confidence to buy high and buy early, but it also cost airlines revenue. Now Alaska has tightened how its customers can capture a lower fare – requiring them to cancel their reservations and book again instead of just getting a voucher for the difference. One reader followed those instructions, then discovered that the credit he’d received couldn’t pay for his replacement Companion Fare booking. Alaska ultimately agreed to give his money back, but the problem exposes how much less useful “no change fees” can become without actually bringing back a change fee. Several days ago, I was told Alaska’s rebooking policy was changing, with October 7 expected to be the effective date: Alaska’s rebooking policy is changing. No more credits for fare adjustments, we’ve been informed that reservations will need to be cancelled and rebooked. Reader Brian shares that’s been his exact experience. He’d booked a December trip to Kauai and saw the price fall. When he called to have his tickets repriced, an agent told him Alaska had stopped doing this the previous day. He’d need to cancel, receive a credit, and buy the tickets again. He did. Then he found that Alaska Wallet funds weren’t accepted for his Companion Fare reservation. Nobody mentioned this when I called. So now I had a credit I couldn’t use for the very reservation I was trying to rebook. After another call, Alaska offered to refund the full credit to his original payment method. He separately canceled his son’s ticket to get the lower price. He’d paid for an upgraded seat, but when he selected the upgraded seat on the new booking, he discovered that his credit couldn’t pay for that either. These Restrictions Are On Alaska’s Website Alaska’s Lowest Fare Customer Commitment says, “we can’t apply price adjustments after purchase.” It then describes canceling and rebooking a refundable ticket when a lower fare becomes available. Alaska still advertises no change fees for Main and first class fares. An eligible ticket can still produce the same dollar result through cancellation and rebooking: cancel a $500 ticket, use $400 of the credit to buy the cheaper replacement, and keep $100 toward another trip. However, you then need to rebuild everything in your original reservation – an unnecessary complexity and tax on customers to make securing savings more difficult Companion Fare payments. Alaska’s published terms say: “Wallet funds may not be used to purchase tickets with companion fare code discounts.” You can end up needing a new card payment while Alaska holds the money from your old booking. An expired companion certificate. Those same terms say an unexpired Companion Fare code is returned with its original expiration date, while an expired code is forfeited when the ticket is canceled. A certificate that was valid when you booked might have expired since. Canceling could cost you the discount altogether. Paid seats. Alaska’s seat terms say canceling a nonrefundable ticket sends both the airfare and the seat fee into Wallet. They also prohibit spending Wallet funds on main cabin seat upgrades. They’ll credit the money you spent on the seat, then require another payment to buy the seat again. Availability. Canceling releases the old booking. Your seats, a confirmed upgrade, and the lower fare you just found may not all be available when you rebuild it. For a family, getting everyone seated together again can be worth more than a modest fare drop. Seats you release should be available most of the time but that’s not guaranteed. There’s inconsistent implementation of the Companion Fare payment rule. Frequent Miler reported in July that some accounts could use Wallet funds for these tickets, but others still couldn’t. Other Airlines Still Let Customers Recover Fare Drops Alaska isn’t the only airline that tells customers to cancel and rebook. JetBlue is similarly customer-unfriendly (in a lot of ways, to be honest). However, outside of basic economy and some international tickets: Airline How Customers Can Capture A Lower Fare American An agent can reprice an eligible ticket and issue the difference as Trip Credit. Delta Eligible tickets can be repriced, with agent help when needed. Delta’s rules provide an eCredit when the replacement fare is lower. United Customers can use the flight change process. United issues future flight credit when changing to a less expensive flight. Southwest Eligible fares can be changed to capture the difference, as credit or a refund depending on the fare. Delta’s Companion Certificate terms allow payment with eCredits, provided the credit matches the traveler. Restricting how canceled-ticket money can be spent is a choice. United’s original 2020 change-fee elimination didn’t preserve the leftover value when customers switched to cheaper flights. They designed the policy to avoid precisely this kind of customer savings, but they reversed that restriction in April 2021 because competitors had gone farther. Making Customers Give Up Is One Way To Earn Business The most charitable explanation for Alaska’s reported change is reducing the work agents do: stop manually repricing reservations, send people to the website, and use a standard cancellation process. That might save Alaska money, though in this reader’s case it meant two calls instead of one. There’s absolutely no customer benefit in the repricing change. Clearly Alaska expects fewer customers to bother. Someone who’d request a $40 credit may leave the ticket alone if saving the money means risking their seats, dealing with a companion certificate, or charging the trip again. Alaska retains more of the original fare without creating a change fee as such. An airline may want to offer a last-minute discount to fill empty seats without having to reduce what everyone who already booked pays. But Alaska also gets something valuable from giving customers confidence to buy early. A customer willing to book a $600 ticket today, knowing a later price drop can become credit, hands the airline money and if the fare drops, they’re issuing a credit encouraging another purchase. Without that confidence, some travelers will wait. Others will make their advance purchase with an airline that makes it easier to recover a price drop. I’ve written before about how usable credits help lock in loyalty. And as I noted in this week’s discussion of when to book holiday flights, being able to claim a useful credit means you don’t need to guess the perfect purchase date. Topics on this page