Difference between Cancellation and Change?

Folks,

As I understand it you can 'change' an FC redemption booking up to departure for a GBP25 fee.

To cancel you will lose your miles if done within 7 days of departure.

Now as non-revenue seats _very_ often become available 5 days before departure, could I 'change' a booking to a newly available flight, possibly to or from a different airport but costing the same number of miles?

Or is that classed as a cancellation and a re-book?

Here's the deal: I have a UC redemption booking to EWR and back from IAD. I would prefer to fly back from MIA if that becomes available. Why? You get longer in the air, that's why.

Cheers, Howard

[mcmbenjamin]

Have done it. Normally booked JFK-LHR for the UCS but then when IAD gets the A346 I would switch to leave from IAD. Charged US50 change fee.

But now you have a new element to consider that i do not know the answer to. When a person changes a revenue ticket the normal policy is change fee plus fare difference. Assuming you booked prior to March 1, the mileage rates went up. I would say they would be in reason to take the difference in miles.

Originally posted by mcmbenjamin

But now you have a new element to consider that i do not know the answer to. When a person changes a revenue ticket the normal policy is change fee plus fare difference. Assuming you booked prior to March 1, the mileage rates went up. I would say they would be in reason to take the difference in miles.

I asked this when I booked my redemption for November. The answer was a definite yes - the difference in miles would be required for a change of departure airport or destination, although not for a change of date.[n]

Jilly

[mcmbenjamin]

Thanks Jilly. I feared that. The IAD CH is nice. You can change into your sleep suit in the CH and walk onboard. How Cool

Lets start a new trend. When traveling out of IAD, take photo in the sleep suit in the lounge? Avoid the 'flying dress codes' with a uniform!

Originally posted by mcmbenjamin
Have done it. Normally booked JFK-LHR for the UCS but then when IAD gets the A346 I would switch to leave from IAD. Charged US50 change fee.

But now you have a new element to consider that i do not know the answer to. When a person changes a revenue ticket the normal policy is change fee plus fare difference. Assuming you booked prior to March 1, the mileage rates went up. I would say they would be in reason to take the difference in miles.

Thanks for the great info. Coincidentally last night I was about to book a redemption trip to New York over the weekend and I noticed that suddenly it's 100k miles, so I'd need to pull some more miles from my Amex account, but now there's not enough time for them to get there.

On a related point, although I guess that Triple miles is great, it will inevitably dilute the miles value. There's only so many free seats I guess.

Cheers, Howard

They've been running similar high value UC promos for quite a while now (in my memory there's been GBP 200 John Lewis vouchers, the Sony gadgets, 20k miles, triple miles). I am sure VS has balanced the risk of giving out the extra miles with the increased revenue, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

If this ever became an issue, then VS would further limit reward availability, and perhaps more people would be spending their miles in Lagos rather than Miami or Vegas.

They could also further restrict MpM, or even notch the miles cost up a couple of thousand miles more. I tend to think of the value of miles in "flight / cash equivalent" terms.

For example 2k miles saves you GBP50 on a MpM, 100k miles saves you GBP1500 say for a Z fare. The cash saving per FC mile on an economy MpM is higher than on an Upper class reward flight. Is this actually how VS want it given how low the reward thresholds (2k miles) are for MpM?

Thought I'd append a question to this since it's entirely relevant.

So changes can be made at any time, cancellation must be made 7 days before. Seems strange. Is there anything stopping me from changing a flight date the day before the flight and then cancelling it based on the new departure date.

Phil

I think the cancellation penlty is based upon the 'original' travel dates.

Thanks Juliet,

OK. Now I have a real life scenario. My in-laws were originally due from MCO next Wednesday (19th July). Due to problems renewing their passports we (last week) rearranged the flights to mid August.

However on Friday their passport renewal application was returned with errors and they are now facing a further 8-10 week delay on their passports which will put their visit back to October which is too late.

As I understand it we have two options:

1. We could cancel the flights now and lose 25% miles.
2. We could rearrange flights again but the next window would be next Summer so cannot change flights yet as flights for next July are not bookable yet. Also if we change flights again then later need to cancel them we would lose all miles as the original travel date was 19th July.

I know it's a bit complicated but is being forced on us by a bureaucratic (and IMHO somewhat corrupt) Vietnamese Embassy in Washington.

Thanks

Phil