Award Ticket Change Fees Are Getting Ridiculous: This Is Just The Beginning

I'm honestly surprised Delta hasn't started this trend in the US... yet

not trying to rile a certain person up but it would be very on brand for Delta to continue making SkyPesos more punitive

@ MaxPower -- How dare you suggest such a thing when United loses more bags than Delta!

Elite status plays into this, for points and miles travellers. As they add this pain/friction, they'll provide relief from it, in proportion to our "loyalty". So we points junkies will have one more reason to get on the hamster wheel(s). I know some who maintain FlyingBlue Platinum and Aeroplan Super Elite year after year, largely because they value the flexibility of speculative award bookings.

Air Canada has always had a simple pain/friction structure just like the doom Ben predicts in this post: all award itineraries can be booked with no cancel/change fee (and access to Signature Suite Dining on International departures from Toronto/Vancouver) for about 20% more points. Without this "surcharge" (it's no additional money, only more points), cancel fees are under USD$150. Super Elite Aeroplan members (highest tier, requiring ~USD$14,000 spend/yr on airfares) are exempt from all cancel/change fees.

I'd expect the US3 to add cancel fees but exempt high elites, maybe even couponize award cancellations: "Diamond Imperial Champagne members get 6 free cancellations per year! Reach Titanium Universal Ubiquity level and get 20!"

Post is up 37 minutes and you guys are already feeding the trolls.

While I rarely have been asked to prove it, it’s nice for immigration purposes to show you have a return flight when entering a country. Have a throw away flight to cancel for free while waiting to confirm plans or waiting for a business award seat to open up for the return home later.

At least in the case of Lufthansa, they started this because people booked flexible tickets as a backup for flights with the Middle Eastern carriers on routes going east from Europe, then canceled last-minute if their ME flights actually departed.

Aeroplan has implemented this for years . A refundable award ticket costs more than one with a change/ cancellation fee .
If I'm speculating , I buy the fully refundable ticket for more miles , insurance in a way . I think one could cancel and rebook at a better mileage rate close in though.
I avoid booking award tickets with high cancellation / change fees.
I would imagine experienced miles people will avoid the ethiad , Lufthansa mileage programs because of this . I'm not sure if it's actually good for the airlines loyalty programs revenue in the long term ?

This shouldn't affect the 24 hour refund rule, so that should still be easy

Just as easy with a full-fare refundable cash ticket. Choose your card with the latest statement date and the refund will hit before it.

This is why I’ve started paying cash. It’s really not that expensive. RT in J SE Asia-EAST coast 3100$ in business. Africa to States? 2900$ RT.

Not playing this game to pay 160k-200k miles RT (before taxes), when cash fares are slightly more

I like what UA originally did and FlyingBlue (La premiere) where only those with status could book awards/more awards.

Mileage redemptions are dead for the most part. Even with over 8 million stacked up you get high change fees, ridiculous taxes, and all these 1x a year honeymooners/family camping to their Q-Suite for their first time 365 days before departure.

It’s just going to keep going downhill like this

The game is harder, no doubt about that. But I have a family of four. Realistically I'm not paying $16,000-20,000 just on airfare. Instead I did, for this summer
BWI-SEA, Alaska companion + credits
SEA-SIN-BK, Singapore J award booked via Krisflyer
(DMK-HKT cash)
HKT-HKG on Cathay J award booked via AsiaMiles
HKG-HAN on Vietnam Y, booked via Flying Blue
(HAN-SGN cash)
SGN-LHR on Vietnam J, booked via Flying Blue
LHR-BWI on BA J, booked via avios.

So an Asia trip with a RTW ending, cost me about a million points but I can generate points with very little opportunity cost, whereas just BWI-BKK alone would cost me $20,000 that -- even if I can part with it-- could be earning interest instead

Fees are multiplying , and morons are paying , and airline execs are applauding the morons .

I'm mostly in support of this change. It definitely hurts people who can speculatively book flights, then plan trips around them, then make last-minute changes to their itinerary. It also hurts mileage brokers. On the other hand, significantly restricting changes and cancellations on award tickets may make them easier to obtain for most people who plan their trip first, then book flights around it.

9 flights on a single trip with a family of 4 sounds incredibly miserable.

This is where its going. Its just better to pay cash. And sometimes you find some great bargains in J. I have seen itineraries between US and Europe for $2600 RT.

The awards journey is over. It was great while it lasted but they have kept chipping away at benefits and it has massively accelerated in the past few years with reels on social media with some influencer telling the world how they a $12000 ticket for just $5.60 in J class.

Infact its liberating, you have no loyalty to anyone. You find the best itinerary for you and go with it.

As others have pointed out, your friends over at Air Canada invented this system, not LH. This AC ripoff is why I generally don't use their program, except for last-minute LH F returns from Europe.

BR has had this for a long time. Waived for status and it's not really *that* expensive, but it's still kind of annoying.

Not gonna happen in US, as American airlines are afloat due to selling huge amounts of miles via credit cards and other shopping deals to consumers. If they loose even a small portion of that revenue by restricting customers with utilizing their awards - they will fail.

The annoying and disappointing this about Lufthansa Miles&More is that even after the ME airlines are back mostly, they keep increasing the fees. The definition of a fully flex ticket means just that "Flexibility". That word probably means something in Lufthansa's vocabulary.

It's not even just the redeposit/cancellation fees. The surchages to North America are now at /over BA's level of about €1000 one way in J.

What LH does is definitely ridiculous. We (corporate) decided to longer fly with them, since our flex tickets need to be flexible. Period.

Isn't AC like 150 CAD to cancel? I mean that's annoying but hardly the end of the world, and probably prevents squatters.

AC's far greater crime is the absolutely bonkers number of miles they want on their own metal.

They high number of miles is what makes the fee so egregious.

This is what happens when things go mass market, they get destroyed to the point theyre useless.

Every normie now knows about airline points, so airlines points become less value and more alligned to basically being alternative cash.

This would be a sucky development. To me the primary benefit of using points is the flexibility of being able to cancel. And not just if you have to cancel your trip completely. But the ability to jump on something quickly when it appears, without knowing for sure it's going to work out. Then you start looking seriously at hotels and connections, and looking for a return flight.

I don't think I buy this theory of future doom. Unless these same airlines are also making unsold inventory available for award booking within ~7 days (the other side of the coin), then THEY are not doing everything they can to avoid empty seats. So many airlines have plenty of empty seats but no availability.

Delta already does - of the big 3 they are the only one to sell Basic Economy award tickets and they have a cancelation fee.

The 'no change fees' approach is unsound precisely because it incentivises speculative bookings resulting in unsold inventory and people missing out on flights they want to take even if they depart with empty seats. This is a cost to the industry which is passed on to the consumer- this is a very simple construct and there's no need to go into RASM, CASM, lost bags or whatever to confirm it happens.

The question when it comes to awards is whether there should just be a small fee as a deterrent or a set of options like with cash fares. Dynamic pricing and fare families seem to clearly align with the latter approach and, once again, I think that they'd help optimise revenue management which, in a functioning market, should ultimately benefit the travelling public (of course that won't happen if airline cartels are permitted to artificially restrict supply and hike prices, but that's exactly what happens with cash fares- some markets are genuinely competitive, some aren't).

Asking for your flexibility to be subsidised by fellow pax isn't quite the consumer-friendly move you seem to think it is.

Lufthansa-Group . . . just today (1.6.2026) realized, they were going TOO FAR.
... and then again, who would want to fly one of the biggest gangster airline group at all, unless it's dirt cheap? 😉 Service, pricing, professionalism in head of the management, ALL a thing from the past, today, more like corruptness all over, Ryanair philosophy, bad supervision!
Here the changes to fares AGAIN:
die Airlines der Lufthansa Group stellen auf ausgewählten interkontinentalen Strecken die gewohnte Flexibilität in allen Tarifen (mit Ausnahme der First Class) wieder her und reduzieren in diesem Zuge auch die Erstattungsgebühren. Grundlage ist die Stabilisierung der operativen Rahmenbedingungen nach den im Frühjahr 2026 vorgenommenen kurzfristigen Gebührenanpassungen.

Die Änderungen im Überblick:

Ab 3. Juni 2026 (Datum der Ticketausstellung):

Economy, Premium Economy und Business Class Flex-Tarife: kostenfrei erstattbar
First Class Flex-Tarife: weiterhin gegen Gebühr erstattbar; die Erstattungsgebühr wird reduziert
Ab 10. Juni 2026 (Datum der Ticketausstellung):

Basic Plus und Green Fares in allen Reiseklassen: reduzierte Erstattungsgebühr
Die Änderungen betreffen Flüge zwischen Europa und Asien-Pazifik, Südafrika, Mauritius und den Seychellen sowie Flüge von Asien-Pazifik nach Brasilien. Auf diesen Strecken werden die im Frühjahr 2026 vorgenommenen temporären Anpassungen damit weitgehend wieder zurückgenommen; alle übrigen Strecken waren von Änderungen nicht betroffen.