No Need to Lose it: What Are Your Options if You Can't Use Your Tickets as Scheduled?

Call Your Airline to Cancel!

If you travel regularly on business, you may be more familiar with full fare refundable tickets than advance purchase non-refundable. But if you do find yourself traveling on a cheap ticket and your plans change, be sure to cancel your reservation. Don't just be a no-show for the flight. Even if you have no firm plans to travel in the future and won't be able to reschedule anything at that time, it's important to call and cancel. By canceling, the airline will keep your unused ticket as a credit to be used in the future - it's generally valid for a year from the issue date. And you don't necessarily have to use the ticket to go the same place; it can be applied against a ticket to anywhere that your airline flies to.

The Dreaded No-Go Status

In a perfect world, if your plans change, you always remember to call your airline and cancel your reservation, giving yourself a credit to be used in future. But of course, you are busy and have a hundred other things to deal with. So, what happens if you forget to call your airline and cancel your reservation? At some point after your flight has departed as scheduled - usually after 24 hours has passed - your ticket will go into what the airlines call no-go status. The name is somewhat self-explanatory: it means that your ticket now has no value and cannot be used again.

If this does happen to you, don't panic. Ask the agent nicely if he or she will change the no-go back to OK; (OK status meaning that it is good to be used again). It helps if you have a good reason that you didn't call and cancel (your meeting ran late, you had a family emergency, etc.). If a regular agent won't do this for you, ask firmly to speak to a supervisor. Airline agents do have the capability and the authority to fix this problem. When I worked in that capacity, I always changed no-go tickets back to OK - partly in the interest of customer service and partly because I knew the passengers were still going to pay the change fee anyway.

Electronic Tickets Make Life Easy

You may well be wondering how you are going to keep track of all these unused tickets if you fly regularly and frequently have to change your plans. One of the big advantages of e-tickets is that you don't have to. Your airline will do it all for you. Even if you have a dozen unused tickets, airlines can usually find them for you by your name or frequent flyer number. If possible, if you don't fly as scheduled, keep a note of the ticket number. That is the easiest way for your airline to find the record of your unused ticket. If you use a travel management company, they are also probably familiar with the system and can easily access your unused tickets.

Change Fee

Of course, there is no escaping the change fee. If you cancel your non-refundable ticket and keep it as a credit to use later, you will still have to pay the change fee. The good news is that you don't need to pay it at the time you cancel your ticket, only when you call and rebook a trip with the unused ticket. At that point, you will have to pay whatever the change fee is as well as any difference in fare. And in case you are wondering, you can generally use more than one old unused ticket towards a new ticket. If there is a difference in the fare in your favor, you will probably receive a voucher from your airline, good for a year.