Southwest Bereavement Fares: What the Fare Rules Give You Instead

The 24-hour rule, and how to use it tonight

Under US Department of Transportation rules, a ticket bought at least seven days before departure can be cancelled within 24 hours of purchase for a full refund.

That gives you a strategy for the first evening, when nobody knows the date yet:

1. Book something that roughly fits, to hold a seat at today's price.
2. Keep looking, or have someone look for you.
3. Cancel within 24 hours if better appears or the arrangements change.

Seats on a specific day do not become easier to find, and short-notice fares move in one direction. Holding something costs nothing inside that window.

Booking at short notice

• Be flexible about the airport. This airline serves a number of secondary airports that often have seats when the obvious one does not — and on several city pairs it is the one flying there at all.
• Be flexible about the time of day. Early and late departures have availability midday flights do not.
• Consider a connection. On short notice a one-stop routing frequently exists when the nonstop is full.
• Book one-way if the return is unknown. With no change fees this is less costly here than on most airlines.
• Say what the travel is for. It will not change a published price, but it changes how hard an agent looks on your behalf.

If you already hold a ticket you cannot use

This is a separate question from booking new travel, and it is routinely forgotten in the first days.

Because there are no change fees, a trip you can no longer take is usually straightforward to deal with — change it to a date that works, or cancel it and keep the value, depending on the fare type. You will not be arguing for an exception the way you would on an airline with fees, which is one fewer thing to handle.

Deal with it within the first week. Not because of a deadline, but because it is a loose end you will not want to find in two months.

What documentation to have ready

There is no bereavement fare here and so no documentation requirement for one. But if you end up speaking to any airline about an exception on a different booking, or to an insurer, these are the things to have:

• The full name of the person who has died, as it appears on official documents.
• Your relationship to them.
• The name and phone number of the funeral home, hospital or hospice.
• A death certificate when one is issued, though often it is not for days.

A photograph on your phone is sufficient for most purposes. Nobody expects organised paperwork in the first days.

Travelling domestically at short notice with others

These trips are rarely one person. A few practical points when several family members are moving at once:

• Book separately rather than as one record if people are coming from different cities or deciding at different times. One booking that has to be changed for everybody is harder to manage than several that can move independently.
• Check who actually needs to be there for what. Not everyone has to arrive for the same day, and spreading arrivals often makes the whole thing cheaper and easier.
• Nominate one person to coordinate. Four people searching separately is how a family ends up on four different itineraries.
• Agree who is collecting whom. Arriving at the end of this kind of journey with nobody expecting you is harder than people anticipate.

The first hour: a short list

1. Establish the rough window — not the exact date, just whether this is two days or next week.
2. Hold a seat that roughly fits, using the 24-hour rule where it applies.
3. Get the funeral home's name and number. You will need it anyway.
4. Deal with existing bookings you can no longer use.
5. Tell someone when you land, and arrange to be met.

Everything else — the return date, the hotel, the car — can wait a day without costing you anything.

What families most often get wrong

• Spending an hour hunting for a bereavement fare that the airline has said plainly it does not offer.
• Buying the most restricted fare type when the date is not yet fixed.
• Waiting for certainty before booking anything, while seats and fares move against them.
• Forgetting the trip they already had booked and dealing with it months later.
• Everyone booking separately with no coordination, then trying to reconcile four itineraries.
• Not arranging to be met at the other end.

How Fond Travels can help

• We do the looking while you deal with everything else. That is most of what we are for in the first twenty-four hours.
• We tell you straight away which carriers still publish a compassionate fare on your route, so no time goes into chasing one that does not exist.
• We pick the fare type that survives a changed date, which on this airline is the decision that actually matters.
• We coordinate several family members arriving from different places, which is harder than it sounds when everyone is distracted.
• We handle the booking you already had and can no longer use.
• We answer at any hour. These calls do not happen at convenient times.

If you need to travel after a death in the family, call +1 (323) 800 6001. A travel expert answers any hour.