Why You Shouldn’t Book Recurring Flights
After weeks of careful searching, you’ve finally stumbled upon a lot to fly – or so you think. Within hours of booking, you’ll find an even better deal a few hundred dollars less through the same airline. In a rush, you can book a second flight knowing that the seat could be snatched from under you and that most major US airlines offer free cancellation for up to 24 hours (or a similar policy). Turns out this might not be the best idea.
On the Elliot Advocacy forums, user Ness discovered why you should cancel your first flight before booking an almost identical one. After Ness had booked two identical round-trip flights (with a different departure time and day, but the same return flight), United canceled his first booking. According to him, the airline did offer to return the money to him, but a week later he was only given a loan for a future flight.
The act of booking two flights is called “duplicate bookings” in airline jargon. Under United’s contract of carriage , “bookings made to hold or block seats in order to obtain lower fares” may be automatically canceled at the discretion of the airline and the airline alone. (However, the United States contract is not as clear about refunds for duplicate bookings.)
American Airlines will also cancel one of your routes if you book duplicate flights, even if you take advantage of AA ‘s offer to extend the waiting period. (In principle, on some flights you may be given the option to delay your current fare for more than 24 hours, but your original delayed fare / booking will still be canceled if you create a duplicate booking.) Johnny Jet experienced this first – hand with AA too.
“Sometimes when I’m traveling alone and the flights are really cheap, I prefer to keep my two options for myself by making two different reservations,” he wrote about his recent experience. “One flight option is to always fly to where my son Jack is, so in this case, I booked a ticket to fly from South Carolina back home to Los Angeles. In this case, I also found low prices for flights from South Carolina to Florida, where my father lives, so I made a second flight there to visit him. As I do so often, I planned to make this reservation in accordance with American Airlines 24-hour service rules and officially book it later. “
In the end, his second booking was canceled without his consent from AA, which required an exchange with an airline representative due to confusion. Other airlines, including Delta, are also clarifying their duplicate bookings policy; according to recent accounts, Southwest ‘s new booking system recently began tracking its customers who book the same flights.
As we said earlier , ignoring the rules of airline contracts for transportation will not lead you to go to airline jail. We’re not in favor of breaking the rules either, but if you play your cards right, you might get away with it. It may be advisable not to book similar dates if possible. If you want to avoid this entirely, you will not run into this problem if you book two routes on different airlines using their 24-hour cancellation or following a policy to your advantage. And if you find the best flight from the same airline, cancel the second deal just in case.