► Frontier Airlines initially stuck with its standard 90-day voucher expiration date but has since extended it to one year. ► Alaska Airlines travel credits issued on or after March 1, 2020, are valid through Dec. ► JetBlue is giving passengers 24 months to use travel credits issued by Jcredits issued after that are good for one year. 30 passengers who bought tickets after that date are covered by the standard one-year expiration date.
► American is giving travelers until December 2021 or a year after ticket purchase to use flight credits issued last year, but only if the canceled tickets were purchased by Sept. That means travelers who bought a Delta ticket in May and beyond have looming expiration dates. ► Delta extended travel credit expiration dates to the end of 2022 but only if you bought your ticket by April 17 otherwise, you have a year from the date of purchase. ► Allegiant Air issued a blanket expiration date of two years from the date of ticket purchase for all vouchers issued. ► United Airlines, which was blasted for its early pandemic refund policies, extended the expiration date of tickets purchased as far back as May 1, 2019, to March 31, 2022. An airline-by-airline look at pandemic flight credits A couple of airlines issued blanket extensions with little fine print, but many policies are based on ticket purchase or flight cancellation dates, as McClaskey found out the hard way with her Southwest ticket. Southwest passengers who canceled eligible flights early in the pandemic have more than two years to use their credits, for example. The situation is far from dire for all travelers who canceled trips during the pandemic – many airline ticket buyers are covered by expiration dates that run into 2022. "It hit people, 'Oh my gosh it's 2021,''' said William McGee, Consumer Reports' aviation adviser. "It seemed like a long way off last year and now it’s not.'' "To be honest with you, I didn't even look at the (email) confirmation of the travel funds,'' she said.Īs the pandemic enters its second year, a hodgepodge of expiration dates, travel-by restrictions and other fine print on the mountain of travel credits and vouchers airlines issued threaten to sting passengers eager to take those already-paid-for-but-postponed trips and those not yet ready to travel again.Ĭonsumer Reports' advocacy division said it has already seen a "dramatic'' uptick in complaints and questions about airline vouchers and travel credits in the past two months, a shift from complaints about the lack of refunds in the early months of the pandemic, as people realize expiration dates might be looming. 22, the date she canceled her flight to LA. But that policy covered travel funds that expired or were issued between March 1 and Sept. McClaskey figured she was covered by Southwest's more generous COVID-19 policy, which broadly extended credit expiration dates to September 2022. That's a year after she bought the tickets for the California Christmas trip. A year is the standard deadline for rebooking and, in Southwest's case, completing a trip using credits. But Southwest and other airlines extended expiration dates when travel ground to a halt a year ago due to the coronavirus pandemic. McClaskey dug up the email from her canceled flight and saw that the expiration date for her Southwest "travel funds" is June 2. Southwest's website flashed an error: the travel credits couldn't be used because they expire before the end of the planned trip. She didn't think about the money again until a couple of weeks ago when she tried to book three tickets from Chicago to Baltimore for a late-June trip to her teenage son's lacrosse tournament in Delaware. The insurance company executive wasn't eligible for a refund and happily accepted $878 in Southwest Airlines credit because the suburban Chicago family travels three or four times a year and goes out of its way to fly Southwest. Shelly McClaskey and her family planned to spend Christmas in Los Angeles with family but canceled their flights a few weeks before the trip due to COVID-19 shutdowns in Southern California. Watch Video: International travel: Negative COVID-19 test required unless you got vaccine
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