We’re looking for flights to Houston for Champs now and the process of looking through airline policies for cancellations and name changes is proving very difficult. I’m curious what people have found works well for booking flights for Champs with the unique considerations that we won’t know if we qualify until a few weeks before the event and we don’t have our traveling team finalized.
Like many other teams, field trip approval is a complicated and difficult process this year so getting this information to the school two weeks prior isn’t an option for us.
Are you just looking on the airline website, or are you in communication with their group sales department? If not, I’d start getting in contact with the latter to understand the group-specific policies.
Might be time to see who’s played the credit card game on your team. I just peeked at Delta’s website, and they had CAE-HOU for Wednesday-Sunday on 24k SkyMiles; I burned 46k back in 2019 for the same route and purpose (and while I recall splurging on a FC deal one of those post-AndyMark years, I’m pretty sure that was 2018 from my records).
Which, yeah, I just broke the advice I gave two posts ago–but if it’s a small crew or one where everyone is with their parents, it may be worth examining.
Airlines are not particularly helpful. You either pay for refundable tickets or take a chance of loosing your investment. Group travel is slightly different than individual. Every airline is different
“Might be time to see who’s played the credit card game on your team…” No one on my Team.
We can’t book flights until we qualify, and have a pile of school rules to satisfy for travel. I must have everything set up in advance.
If we qualify (on a Sunday evening in March) - I hit “send” on a bunch of pre-written emails. Can generally “pull the trigger” on flights by Monday evening.