Questions and Answers

I purchased a round trip ticket for my daughter to fly from Hong Kong to Denver (home) for a visit. She has already used the outbound portion of her ticket and is supposed to fly back to Hong Kong on Tuesday (9/25). She was diagnosed with skin cancer on Friday. Obviously, we need to change her return flight so she can have the surgery before she returns home. I’ve called Expedia to ask some questions about changing the return flight, but seemed to get an agent who didn’t know much about this process. Her return ticket is on two airlines, Alaska and Delta. Several questions come to mind. 1. Would the airlines be willing to waive the change fee because of the medical need to change the flight. 2. Would I have to contact both airlines to ask about a waiver? 2. Can I change her return to fly into Guangzhou (where she lives) instead of Hong Kong, as the one-way fare is about $200 less than what the return portion of her round-trip fare was. 3. If I contact the airlines, will they bounce me back to Expedia since that is where the ticket was purchased? The Expedia rep didn’t know the answers to most of these questions and I didn’t move the call up the chain because I don’t know when my daughter will be able to fly. I was merely calling to find out what the process might be once we know when my daughter can fly back home. I thought the great folks on this blog may have some experience with this kind of thing and be able to offer some advice. Thanks to all!

@Coloradomom — Ouch, sorry to hear about your daughter! You will need to work through Expedia, most likely, which is a pretty terrible experience. Do you happen to have the eTicket number for her trip? It should be a long chain of numbers. If you can give me the first four digits, I can tell you which airline policy would apply.