How to Make the Most of Flight Changes

How a flight change allowed us to spend a day in the UK

Flight changes can often cause annoyance or even threaten to mess up your carefully thought out plans. But – there’s a way to make them into something workable OR – add an experience to your travels!

Here’s the scenario: you’ve booked a flight, then sometime before leaving, you get the dreaded email……. ‘there’s been a change to your flight plans’. I used to get very stressed when I’d see this email, but now I see it as an opportunity, and I’ll help explain why… and how you can feel the same.

When an airline makes a change to your flight, most of the time, it’s a small change – maybe a few minutes or an hour. And, most of the time, people just read it and move on. We learned though, if an airline makes a change, EVEN if it’s a super small change, you’re able to adjust your flight at no additional cost.

Few disclaimers on when this works:

• You need to have booked directly with the airline (not from a 3rd party like Chase or Expedia)
• You have to pick a new flight that is with that same airline, and not a different one (you can’t have a change on a Delta flight and then pick a United flight instead)
• You must move within the same class of seats (you can’t originally pay for economy and then ask for business class for free)

This is certainly not guaranteed to happen, so make sure you’re booking a flight you’re comfortable with and not gambling on this concept. There may be no change to the flight at all, so you want to make sure you won’t be disappointed with the original flight.

Our approach:

• We book the least expensive flight option to our desired location on the airlines website (note – occasionally, for other reasons, we book through credit card portal, but most of the time, try to book through airline)
• This flight should be on the dates and times that work for us, of course!
• There may be better flight options (less stops, better times etc) but we generally save money and pick the cheapest option that is reasonable for us
• Once booked, I will also document any other flight options with that airline airline that may be better, if a change is made
• Very frequently – the airline will make a change if we book more than 6 months in advance
• Once made, you call the airline directly and let them know that a change occurred and you need to adjust your itinerary (I’ll give a script below). They should do this for free!

We’ve used this approach quite a few times. Here are a few examples:

• Flight to California leaving at 6pm and arriving at 9pm after a stop –> changed to a 3pm departure, arriving at 5pm,.
  • Benefit: allowed us to have an evening dinner in California rather than rushing to hotel and having an evening to adjust to jet lag!

• Flight from Fargo ND with a layover somewhere boring –> changed to add a longer layover instead in Dallas
  • Benefit: instead of a boring layover, we got to experience one of the best lounges out there with amazing free food and drink! Pics from the beautiful CapitalOne lounge:

Our best example yet though, allowed us to visit a brand new country during a layover!

Our flight schedule was:

• Leave 10am from Zurich
• 6 hour layover in Philadelphia before flying home

This flight was fine. We didn’t have to wake up too early for our flight, but the long layover in Philly wasn’t ideal because:

• it’s a long layover
• no lounges in Philly to hang out in! Boring!

THEN…….We got an email saying ‘we made a change to your itinerary’. YAY! The flight was changed to leave at 10:20am. 20 minutes later 😀 Everything else was essentially the same.

This was our opportunity!!

While this change is basically negligible, it provided us a chance to consider other opportunities. The new flight we found was:

• Leave 6am from Zurich
• 8 hour layover in London before flying home

We wanted this flight, despite the absurdly early wakeup call, because it allowed us a chance to visit London and a new country for us.

How to make this happen…

We called the airline and this was what we said:

“Hi, we just got an email that a change was made to our itinerary. Our flight number was BA1234. That new itinerary doesn’t work for our schedule and we need to request a change.”

They asked “It changed by 20 minutes, that doesn’t work?”

We said “No, unfortunately not. We’d like to change to flight number BA4567”.

They made this change for free and it was super simple. When you make this call, make sure you have your current flight itinerary, and the one you want to change to. It needs to be on the same airline, but the cost, as long as it’s the same cabin seating (e.g. economy), shouldn’t matter!

Once you make this change, go enjoy your new vacation schedule! For our day, we were able to take an Uber to the town of Windsor where we wandered the charming streets, did a tour of Windsor Castle and got some fish and chips! It was a great way to get to experience another country, for no additional money – and just a little less sleep 😉

A little about our day in London…

London often has lots of layovers when traveling to the US. We hope to do this again one day as well. During this trip we had 8 total hours from our flight landing to the next one leaving.

Few things you need to account for:

• Where are you storing your bags
  • on this trip, we had free checked backs – we almost never check our bags, but because of our United Credit Card, we had them for free. In this case, checking our bags to our home airport allowed for some time savings because we wouldn’t need to find luggage storage at Heathrow Airport. We each just carried our backpacks with us all day
• Transportation
  • You’ll want to research this ahead of time, so you know your options. We decided if we got in early, we may decided to do central London if we had enough time, otherwise, we researched ride share options
• Making sure you have enough time
  • You’ll need time to clear immigration on the way out, and then go back through security and passport checks on the way back in – and boarding for an international flight often is 1hr before takeoff

Our original plan was to head to Central London and see some of the iconic sites. However, we worried a bit about the time it may take us to enter the country and take the train.

We ultimately decided to take an Uber to Windsor. This was a less hectic option, only about 15 minutes from the airport. We wandered the cute town, booked same day tickets to visit the Windsor Castle, saw the Long Walk and got some fish and chips.

We got back to the airport with plenty of time. Despite LHR’s crowds, it is fairly efficient with security checks. Next time, we may head into Central London to see Big Ben!