Another important detail if you’re hoping to get a flight refund:

**If the airline significantly changes your flight times, you are eligible for a cash refund.**

Here’s what you need to know: (1/9)

When you buy a ticket and you click the terms & conditions box, both you and the airline are agreeing to the airline’s contract of carriage.

One detail in virtually all of them is that passengers are eligible for a refund if there’s a “major schedule change.” (2/9)

Sadly, few airlines are proactively informing passengers. After all, they get to keep your money if you take a travel voucher instead of a refund.

It’s hard to ask for a refund if you don’t know that you’re owed one, and many airlines are playing hide-the-pickle nowadays. (3/9)

What constitutes a “major schedule change”? Generally about 2 hours. If you had a 9am flight and it got switched to 11:30am, you would be eligible for a refund. Same if there’s a big change in the arrival time.

Also if a nonstop flight got switched to a connecting flight. (4/9)

Here’s the specific policies on a handful of airlines:

American Airlines says if your flight was changed by 2 hours or more, it’s eligible for a refund.

https://www.americanairlines.be/content/images/be/PDF/New-Schedule-Change-Document-BE.pdf (5/9)

Delta offers refunds on flight changes of at least 1.5 hours.

https://www.delta.com/us/en/legal/contract-of-carriage-dgr (6/9)

United *used* to have a 2-hour policy, but changed that after the coronavirus outbreak.

They now say only schedule changes of 6+ hours are eligible, and those folks get a voucher that will convert to cash if unused after 12 months. Shameful stuff.

https://onemileatatime.com/united-airlines-refund-one-year/ (7/9)

jetBlue perhaps has the most blasphemous policy change. Until as recently as March 24, they were offering refunds on schedule changes of 2+ hours. Now the policy has been revised to refunds only on 24+ hour schedule changes.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200324201412/https://www.jetblue.com/travel-agents/schedule-change
https://www.jetblue.com/travel-agents/schedule-change (8/9)

And a reminder from the US Department of Transportation:

“A passenger is entitled to a refund if the airline cancelled a flight, regardless of the reason, and the passenger chooses not to be rebooked on a new flight on that airline.”

https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/refunds (9/9)