One of the more entertaining industry conference exchanges in recent memory was last summer's Q&A on ticket name changes between Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson and the crowd at the National Business Travel Associationconvention. "Why don't you just buy 2,000 tickets in John Doe's name and switch them whenever you want?" Anderson asked rhetorically. The audience cheered and Anderson said: "The answer is no!"
But while carriers may not want it advertised, some corporate accounts are asking for and getting flexibility in re-using nonrefundable credits.
Management.travelasked the largest U.S. carriers to clarify their nonrefundable ticket and name change policies as they relate to corporate accounts. "Under certain conditions, we allow a name change on a ticket for corporate accounts when the employee named on the ticket is no longer employed by the company," according to a Continental Airlines spokeswoman. "We work with our corporate clients on a case-by-case basis on other exceptions involving ticket changes."
At Southwest Airlines, "We do reserve the funds for unused nonrefundable tickets," according to a spokeswoman. "These funds can be transferred to other accounts. This would be the same for corporate accounts."
According to an American Airlines spokesman, AA's policy "is to collect the appropriate change fee as specified in the fare rules of each nonrefundable ticket. Regarding any exceptions, it is currently American's policy not to speak on this."
At JetBlue Airways, "name changes are not permitted on nonrefundable fares," according to a spokeswoman. "If a customer will not be traveling and wishes to give the ticket to someone else, they can pay a $100 change/cancel fee and have the amount of the fare transferred to a JetBlue credit good for up to one year--which is fully transferable. For customers who purchase refundable fares, name changes are allowed."
Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and US Airways did not respond to inquiries.
In late January, a Sabre spokesman said usage of nonrefundable tickets for business trips booked within Sabre Travel Network that month was up 7 percent for domestic trips year over year and 16 percent for international trips. Travel managers can apply automation to track nonrefundable airline tickets and get travelers to re-use them as a way of avoiding the higher price for fully refundable and flexible fares.
Some online booking tools show travelers the unused credit they have and automatically apply it to a new booking. Other procedures can alert agents to unused tickets during the booking process, noted McKesson Corp. travel category manager Yoichi Miyazaki during a January webinar sponsored by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and Sabre Holdings.
Miyazaki added that McKesson is "pushing our carriers" for automation related to unused tickets and miscellaneous charge orders (which often are used for ticket exchanges and associated change fees).
With an emphasis on nonrefundables, Capital One during 2008 "added a couple of new processes to think outside the box," said corporate travel manager Heather Young. For example, Capital One challenged its booking tool provider and travel management company to automate the MCO process, "which enables us to use any leftover or residual value on other exchanges," Young said, also speaking during the ACTE/Sabre webinar. For online self-bookings, "any time a traveler has an unused ticket in their profile, and they chose that same carrier for future trips, that is automatically applied to their arrangement."
Young explained that Capital One also "started moving any unused tickets out of an individual's profile into more of a bank. After nine months, if your ticket is not used, it can really be used by any Capital One associate." She also noted that the company implemented "a name-change process with our full-service agency, so where there is an option to use a ticket, we can actually change the name of that unused ticket."
These processes, Young asserted, "helped to drive home the fact that we've got these tickets out there with a pretty significant dollar amount, and it's made it a lot easier for travelers to use those."
Though self-booking tools, global distribution systems and other firms offer automation in this area, there are "certain things these new tools simply cannot do today, like automatically and accurately tracking non-GDS-participating carriers and paper tickets," according to a recent Carlson Wagonlit Travel industry report. "Because a fully automated solution is not available today, manual intervention by travel counselors is necessary for quality control, policy enforcement and complex exchanges. However manual the process is today, great savings can be realized by applying a bit more rigor to unused ticket tracking and fulfillment."
Or asking airlines for support.
"Your greatest leverage is with your preferred suppliers, the ones you have under contract," said Apple Inc.global travel manager Kathleen Ramsay, also speaking during the webinar. "Go back to them and ask them for the name change. The other thing that we have been successful doing is bundling up these unused nonrefundables and going back to the preferred carriers once a year and saying, 'We have these unused tickets, can you guys issue us a credit or vouchers or something along those lines?' With preferred suppliers, they have been willing to do that, and it has been because of the relationships."