Airfare thru ABD or not

[mimmiepnp]

With all the constant changes and cancellations with international flights lately, aside from the fact that it is so expensive, is it better to book thru ABD and they will monitor flights for changes etc or best if book on your own and do your own monitoring ??

 

[TXTransplant]

The benefit to booking through ABD is (was?) that, if you do and ABD cancels (which has happened a lot lately), you get a full refund of your airfare. At least that was the policy before Covid. I think I've seen some posters here say that they only got credits for airfare purchases, even through ABD.

For me personally, I didn't want $5k in airfare credits if my Japan trip got cancelled. So, I would have either purchased non-fundable tickets (which were actually only about $100 more) or bought through ABD. However, I had so little faith the trip would happen, I didn't even buy plane tickets (and I cancelled the trip and ABD refunded my deposit this week).

I'm not sure booking through ABD would help you with changes and cancellations of the actual flights. I think you would still have to deal with the airline directly to get that sorted out.

 

[sayhello]

I'm going to add a new wrinkle to this "airfare through ABD or not" discussion. Of course, take this with a grain of salt that these are strange times as far as flights are concerned, and this may not always be an issue. There is currently a discussion going on in a fb group I belong to, because a member of the group found out the night before they left for their ABD that the first leg of their flight was cancelled. They found out because they checked their reservation at 10pm last night. They booked through ABD, but heard nothing from them, because ABD is now closed on the weekends. Apparently United notified ABD of the change at noon yesterday (Saturday), but ABD obviously didn't get it because no-one is there. Both they and their Travel Agent tried to contact the ABD after-hour phone number, but no-one ever returned the calls. Luckily, United was willing to work directly with them, and they got rescheduled to fly out tomorrow instead of today. Also luckily, they had scheduled a pre-day, so they are only missing that. They get in at like 10am the morning of the first day of the ABD, which is far from ideal, but better than nothing. But if they'd known earlier, perhaps they could have made better arrangements.

So the upshot is a) if you book or have already booked your flights with ABD, you run the risk of missing notifications of flight changes if they happen over the weekend, so keep an eye on your reservation! b) maybe consider booking your airfare yourself for a while until things "normalize" a bit more. And c) try and give yourself extra time if you can to fly anywhere right now. It was the domestic leg that got cancelled!

Sayhello