{"id":8987,"date":"2024-01-11T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-11T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=8987"},"modified":"2024-01-10T18:05:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T01:05:41","slug":"playing-the-travel-waiver-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/11\/playing-the-travel-waiver-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing the Travel Waiver Game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Airlines often issue travel waivers for weather events, ATC strikes, political unrest, and airframe issues<\/a>. We’ve talked about gaming them for other reasons<\/a> in the past, but there are more games too. Let’s use the current Alaska Airlines systemwide travel waiver<\/a> as an object lesson:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alaska’s Waiver<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Boeing’s 737-9 MAX’s planes have been emulating warm champagne bottles<\/a> with loose cork cages, so much so that Airbus probably should issue a press release that says “It’s only an exit door plug if it comes from the ‘Exit Door Plug’ region of France. Otherwise, it’s just sparkling terror.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that the 737-9 MAX is a big part of Alaska’s fleet, they have a systemwide flexible travel policy<\/a> in place through Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel regions: Any
Ticket purchase time: Any
Original travel date: January 6 – January 13
New travel date: January 6 – January 20<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policy allows you to cancel your flight without a fee, or more interestingly, change your trip without a fee to any other flight(s) with the same origin and destination through January 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Game<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Let’s say you want to travel on the direct Alaska Airlines flight from San Diego, CA to Honolulu, HI in first class on Saturday, January 20. The ticket is a whopping $1,409 per passenger. If however you booked the direct flight leaving tomorrow, it’s $674 in first class, or a $735 savings over the Saturday flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See the angle here? To save $735, book tomorrow’s flight for $674, then change your flight online or call Alaska and ask them to switch you to Saturday, January 20’s flight for no additional charge. Easy peasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caveats<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Some travel waivers have additional restrictions, like requiring that a ticket be purchased before the waiver was issued, or that it has the same routing as the original ticket. Like all things in airline life though, these rules really ought to be called guidelines. Most agents are willing to color outside the lines a bit with waivers, especially so if you hold status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy hacking!<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Exclusive: The comprehensive airframe Quality Assurance test report for the incident Boeing 737-MAX 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Airlines often issue travel waivers for weather events, ATC strikes, political unrest, and airframe issues. We’ve talked about gaming them for other reasons in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airlines","category-travel-hacking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8991,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8987\/revisions\/8991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}