In February, I booked airplane tickets for a trip to New York City at the end of April. Things weren’t bad at that time and I was sure we’d be able to go. Just to be safe I used frequent flyer miles to book our flights. I figured that if I needed to cancel the flights, I’d have an easier time getting my points back than trying to get a cash refund.
This was before everything went haywire and airlines started making up their own rules about how they’re handling flight changes, cancellations and customer refunds (or credits).
It’s just over two weeks from our departure date. I’ve received four flight change notices but JetBlue is still flying from Orlando to JFK. Anyone coming from NY to Florida is supposed to self-quarantine for 14 days. NYC is going through the worst of their problems, so I don’t see how, except for emergencies, anyone would WANT to take this flight.
But it’s still on the schedule and I have to cancel my ticket. Fortunately, JetBlue is now letting me refund the points to my account since the recent flight time change is more than two hours.
I logged into my account on the JetBlue website and clicked on “My Trips.”
From there, I headed to “Manage Trips.”
This took me to the list of my trips. The flight to NYC was the only one listed. I clicked on “Manage flight.”
Since my flight just changed, a screen showed up asking me to accept my new flight. Instead of doing that, I clicked on “Cancel my flight.”
I was shown the details of my refund. The 22,000 points I paid for the tickets would be refunded to my TrueBlue account. The taxes I paid on the ticket were refunded to a Travel Bank account. There was no place for me to ask for a refund. It’s only $11.20 and the Travel Bank funds are good for 18 months. I hope we’ll be flying again before that.
I could make a big deal of it and demand a refund by calling or writing on Twitter. It’s not worth it to me at the moment. I was able to cancel my flight and get the miles back with relative ease. I’m happy with that right now.
All I had to do to complete the transaction was to click “Cancel Flight(s).”
All finished.
Final Thoughts
JetBlue has changed its position on issuing refunds for canceled or rescheduled flights many times during this crisis. I was hoping they would just totally cancel our flight and it would be easier to ask for a full refund. The next best thing happened and the rescheduled flight time was by enough time so that I could refund the ticket with no fees.
Since we’re not going to New York any time soon, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.
#stayhealthy #stayathome #washyourhands
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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