One
means with which to save money on your
flight in the form of a voucher is in
the situation where the price is dropped
after you've bought the ticket. Many
airlines will refund you the difference
if you approach them about it.
The
following is an excerpt from
this article in Yahoo! finance:
Few
customers realize it, but many airlines
will give refunds if they cut the price
after you have bought a ticket.
Alaska, JetBlue, Southwest,
United and
US Airways all offer vouchers for
the full price difference -- if the
price drops $200, you can get a $200
coupon towards a future trip. Others
offer vouchers, or cash, after deducting
change fees (which can run up to $100).
In
industry jargon, it is called a rollover,"
and in most cases it only works if you
bought the ticket directly from the
airline. (It generally won't work if you
bought them via a Web site such as
Expedia.com or Orbitz.com, unless the
price drops in the first 24 hours.)
While
refund policies have been in effect for
some time, it hasn't been possible to
correctly track the changes in prices
and make a claim. Recent web services
such as yapta.com have sprung up to
tackle this by providing a way to track
changes in prices after a ticket has
been bought.
The
following is a news report about the
Yapta service:
In
practice though, some airlines refuse to
offer refund vouchers for small drops in
price, a beta test of the yapta.com
service indicated that while some
airlines such as United and Alaska will
offer a very generous refund policy,
others such as American and Continental
tended not to do so unless the price
drop exceeded $100.
