Family Emergency / Bereavement Airfares: Worth A Try

I recently learned that if you have to fly on short notice due to a medical emergency or a funeral, there is something called a “bereavement fare” or “compassion fare”. The rules differ between all the airlines, but basically if you qualify you get around 50% off the highest non-restricted airfare available. You’ll need to call each airline directly for details. These full fares can be extremely high, and even at half-off still way more than what you would get at a site like Expedia.com. The main benefit to these fares is that you can usually change your arrival and departure dates much more easily and without penalty fees. Here is a good article at SmarterLiving that goes into more detail about bereavement fares.

First, we went browsing online. Usually when you sort the results by price it looks something like this: $300, $315, $340, $410, …

But given our short notice, it went like this: $300, $800, $900, …

I called to get a price quote for a bereavement fare and the price was about double the lowest online fare. Luckily, the flight schedule that was available for the lower price was something we could work around. If that flight schedule was sold out, we would have gone for the bereavement fare.

Another idea to try is that you can try to use your frequent flier miles, and if you qualify under their bereavement fare rules (and there is a frequent flier seat available) they may waive the 14-day advance booking requirement. In the end, it’s a good thing to know that these alternatives exist, especially due to the added flexibility. But it’s quite likely that you’ll be able to do better on your own.

Find more in Frugal Living | 3/31/07, 10:50pm | Trackback