In response to falling demand and travel restrictions, airlines across the globe have continued to adjust their flight schedules and make necessary flight cuts.
While we are seeing more airlines relaxing their flight change & cancellation rules, in favour of the customers, United Airlines has just made it harder for passengers to seek a ticket refund, when the flight is delayed or cancelled.
What is The Policy Change
Effective today, a refund will only be offered if there is a schedule change of at least 25 hours; the previous threshold was at least 2 hours.
Suppose your United flight from SFO to NRT on 9th March is cancelled, you cannot ask for a refund if United choose to re-book you on the same flight the next day (10th March).
Questionable Explanation For The Policy Change
Here is the explanation by United:
“We recently announced a significant reduction of our international and domestic schedules and as a result, we expect more customers to be impacted than normal. This policy change allows us to accommodate our customers by offering more options to rebook their flights.“
It is quite clear that United is forcing an explanation out for this unfavourable policy change; which, in my opinion, failed horribly.
We all understand that airlines are having one of their toughest times right now. I believe many of us would be understanding if United were to be forthcoming in explaining that this policy change is necessary to keep the company afloat.
United Flight Cancellations Over The Week
Based on publicly available data, we noticed that United has made approximately 176 flight cancellations (scheduled for April) over the last week.
These flight cancellations are attributed to Covid-19, rather than travel seasonality. Here is the list of routes with more than 1 flight cancellation, just over last week.
| Routes | Number of Flights Cancelled Last Week (Scheduled for April) |
| EWR-SFO | 3 |
| EWR-MCO | 2 |
| EWR-LAX | 2 |
| EWR-PIT | 2 |
| LAS-SFO | 2 |
| SAN-SFO | 2 |
| IAD-SFO | 2 |
| IAD-LAX | 2 |
| IAH-SEA | 2 |
| EWR-PBI | 2 |
| DEN-LAX | 2 |
| EWR-IAD | 2 |
| EWR-LAS | 2 |
| MCO-ORD | 2 |
| DEN-PAE | 2 |
| ORD-ROA | 2 |
You may download the full list in the PDF below.
I’m a UA 1K with multiple UA long haul flights over the next four weeks. This change gives UA a +/-25 hr window They can move your flight forward as well as back which trashes my risk protocols as I can longer predict my transit duration nor if I’ll make connections or when I’ll reach my destinations.
UA is placing their financials well in front of passenger safety. So I’m a free agent from here.
So I fly internationally a lot and sometimes for not terribly long events (a two-day conference). If United delays my travel for 24-hours there’s no point in me going in these cases. How dare they make this change? They have taken so much away in a race to the bottom (most US airlines have) and now this? Not business friendly at all.
Talking about refunds / reducing ticket prices, when are airlines going to reflect the price of oil (currently shown as an additional tax) or have they all locked in high oil prices…..
interestingly, oil price has slumped into period low. not too sure if airlines can take this opportunity to lock in cheap kerosene, considering the fact that most of them are cash strapped