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My wife and I are set with JetBlue PointsMatch from Virgin America, status match to Jet Blue Mosaic from Delta Diamond. Now we need to earn the points with our butts in seats.
I have never taken a pure mileage run and I assure you my wife will not. We do have a planned weekend trip to New Hampshire that we can fly to Boston, as the flights from New York to Manchester are poorly timed and expensive, and Portland just expensive.
JetBlue flies several times a day between JFK and Boston, with a bonus couple from Newark, more convenient for us.
Typical for summer the Friday evening and Sunday evening flights are much more expensive than early morning departures. I started looking into JetBlue’s same-day change policy to find it, on paper, very generous. Reports online are thin, most blog posts are written by non-JetBlue flyers, and FlyerTalk posts, in inimitable FT style, start “I have no experience of this, but…” and then take the discussion in an irrelevant direction.
The official same-day change policy is here. The key points:
- Flight can be earlier or later than original, as long as on same calendar day (thus excluding routes with only one daily flight)
- Routing can change (e.g. connecting to nonstop) as long as origin and destination the same
- Co-terminals allowed, which should cover switching from JFK to EWR
- Request by calling at midnight day of departure, while Mosaics can call 24 hours from original departure, all must request prior to original departure
- Appears to only require cabin of service availability, meaning if you booked economy and they have economy seats available, you can do it (in contrast to airlines such as Delta that now require same booking fare code, which has made Delta SDC mostly useless for me)
- $50 fee, waived for Mosaics
Same-day standby is free, requested at airport, and according to the rules only available for:
- The departure immediately prior to original departure
- Cities with only one flight can standby at airport one day prior (unlike same-day change)
- In case of no-show, you can standby at the airport for later flights
With so many flights on my route, I feel reasonably confident that we can book the cheapest Friday morning – Sunday morning flights and same-day change to the evening flights.
If it doesn’t, we are stuck in Boston and my wife orders up another round of lobsters.
Readers, what are your experiences with JetBlue same-day change? Am I missing a gotcha?
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I am also interested in this topic. I am flying an inexpensive mileage run in mid August with a same day turn. While I booked a return flight four hours after I land, there is a flight that leaves 40 minutes after I land. I am going to see whether I can make that flight.
Why fly Jet Blue when Southwest allows you to change or cancel without any fees.
@Gary – just one round-trip to earn the points and flip them for Mint for my wife.
I used to do that a lot. I’ve even done it and just pulled flat tire excuses. Alaska was very good too as a Gold 75K. But anymore I’m flying legacy airlines and they are lame. Even SW is difficult.