Managing Speculative Bookings and Travel Logistics

This is a Voy Escape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyascape. com This week's question of the week Do we book speculatively, hoping for a schedule change LR writes in and says, I was intrigued by a recent post about schedule changes in another group I follow. This particular person noted that anytime United or American Airlines make a schedule change of any type, you can change your flight at no additional cost to your preferred route. Sometimes, you may even have flexibility within several days of the original flight So my question is, is this a tactic that you all use if you book flights far in advance? Pick the cheapest award price from one city to another, then hope for a schedule change in order to change it to your preferred route? Let's talk about that Do you do that, Greg I don't do it purposefully, but I've actually considered many times. I've thought about this is something I really ought to do because like What happens is you could book as the person who wrote and mentioned, you could book a Yeah good award price to wherever you want to go Um And if you don't like the route that it's on Um, you know, if when you book like way in advance Schedule changes are really likely to happen between the time you book and when the flight actually happens, even if they're minor. and sometimes even with really minor schedule changes Some airlines will let you make almost any kind of change. and that means you know thingsings like moving from a multi stop itinerary to a non stop or in some cases even change the origin or destination airports that's a little more rare, but but does sometimes happen And so the idea is like you know, you found this incredible award flight, but the routing isn't good. It's really inconvenient for whatever reason book it anyway and Eespecially, you know, this person mentioned American Airlines and United, bothoth of them allow free award changes and cancellations. So you just book it and then hope for a schedule change and then you call the airline and say, hey, u that Schedule change doesn't work for me And u, you know, could could you instead put me on this other. there's there's that direct flight that I want. and I did that once again, it wasn't purposeful, but I had booked a award flight to New Zealand And there was a big schedule change and I was able to fly I was able to change to a flight to Auckland instead of the original booking, which was multi stop to Wellington. and the Auckland was what I really wanted. so You know, you can do that as long as there's that schedule change, you can do that even though there's no award availability on the flight you actually want. Yeah. and you know, important there is that that'll usually be the case usually just on flights operated by the ticketing carrier that it won't matter if there's award availability or not. Usually they can't forced availability on partner airlines. though, I mean there have been some exceptions. We've heard from readers from time to time who've been able to get seat on on a different airline even. But yeah, like you, this is something I don't do intentionally, but it really could be a useful technique. I mean I'm a Frequent southwest fer and Southwest, when they make a schedule change, I think they usually give you something like fourteen days of flexibility. It' maybe it's not fourteen. It's somethinghing ridiculous like that, though. It's not just one or two days. You get quite a range of days you can change to and change to other flight times and more direct routings or whatever for no additional fees So I think it probably is a useful tactic to employ. That said I don't actively use this. Now, I'm going to talk about why I don't in a second. but before I do, I will say that I Greg mentioned calling to get the flight you want, but sometimes you could just pick it and you know the app. The airline apps are often better. I've found with stuff like this than the website and faster than calling and talking to someone. So a lot of times you'd be able to pick things there. Now, obviously the thing you want might not be there, but you do need to know what you want, what the airline offers before you even call. You know what are the options? What's the ideal thing that you want. I think it helps to know that ahead of time. So you got to look at the different routings that are for sale even So all right, that thing that's one thing. anotherother related thing is sometimes this can really work in your favor. This happened to me recently. I had a flight booked from Nashville to Albany, Nashville, Tennessee to Albany, New York. And Southwest had some incredible sale thirty or forty minutes flights were like a thousand points each way. And so I booked a very indirect routeing. It was like Nashville to or Orlando to Albany. and Southwest must to had a schedule change because I woke up to an email a few days ago and that said, Ohh, your flight's been cancellled. They put me on the nonstop, Nashville to Albany instead. So that's a perfect example of wow this I wasn't intending. This wasn't intentional. I didn't book it Expecting that kind of a change, but hey, great that it worked out. And you know so if you have access to same day flight changes, that can be another way you can sort of employ this technique, not a schedule change necessarily. But I know that both of us have booked unal things multiple times before with airlines with which we can get a free same day change That's a feature of elite status or with Southwest. If you book a choice fare or higher, you can change for free on the day of departure. And there have been plenty of times where I have booked the un ideal option expecting to change on the day of departure I've done that successfully a number of times Why don't I speculatively book more of these far in advance, hoping to change later Really for me, I think the biggest thing is the mental bandwidth to keep track of everything that I have booked and when it all needs to get changed or especially if I'm booking trips that I'm not even like very mentally invested in yet. it's a lot of stuff to juggle if you start doing this for a lot of different trips. And I do use tripet to keep track of my flights Even then, I used that app to keep track of stuff. and just the other day, I canceled a bunch of stuff and there was luckily just a restaurant reservation that I had forgotten about. And I got a notification from Google ten minutes beforehand that reminded me. and I I canceled a bunch of other stuff. I forgot about that reservation. and it wasn't a big deal because it was just a restaurant reservation, but it would be a bigger deal If that were a flight and I didn't see the notification until too late and I couldn't get my points back. So I'm lukewarm on speculative bookings because we do book a lot of trips and so I've constantly got a lot of trips on mind and I don't really want to add to them But I think it's really a good technique. Really, great point. A couple of things about doing this if you are interested in doing it is I'm not an expert on this by far, so I don't know what the rules are, but I do I'm sort of vaguely aware that different airlines have different rules about how big of a schedule change matters enough to allow a free change to of routing And so you know, you might have to the schedule change might have to be like an hour or might have to cause too tight of a connection to be viable, something along those lines for it to work it also might vary based on You know, some airlines might not have that really hard coded. might depend on who you talk to, might depend on your elite status, things like that. So Just something to keep in mind that if the schedule changes by a few minutes, you that might not help you, but I can't tell you for sure. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. 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