Airline charges to change flight dates

monruth

I booked a flight on KLM for later this month and for personal reasons which would not be covered by insurance I have changed it for 5 days later.
I was charged £200 to do so. KLM charges a minimum of £150 for alterations, £10 admin fee to the travel agent and £40 for the difference as more expensive seats available on revised date. My gripe is the charge of £150 (and yes I was aware of it when I purchased the ticket) as I think it is very high for essentially two minutes work and does not feel commensurate with a change of flight dates. I dont think the airline is suffering a material loss. Is it only KLM which charges £150 or is this standard across the airlines. Who can advise if consumers can do anything about unreasonable charges ?

19lottie82

Would it not be cheaper to change your insurance?

Heliflyguy

Airline change fees usually depend on the class and route.

On a UK - Europe economy tkt its about £60 on KLM about the same as BA and many others, some airlines will charge a fee for each flight changed, charging on both out and return, where others, BA and KLM for instance will only charge the higher change fee of the two.

For example UK - USA (NYC) change fees can be a lot higher £100 in econ on BA and £300 in premium economy, £100 and £250 on UA same route.

I dont know how airlines decide how much to charge but looking on the bright side £40 for the additional fare is not too bad at all and that might only be down to a change from a weekday fare to a weekend fare.

peachyprice

19lottie82 wrote: »

Would it not be cheaper to change your insurance?

I get the impression that the date change was for a non-insurable reason of which there are many.

Even if it was OP couldn't change insurance now and claim because it's a known event.

DTDfanBoy

monruth wrote: »

KLM charges a minimum of £150 for alterations, £10 admin fee to the travel agent and £40 for the difference as more expensive seats available on revised date. My gripe is the charge of £150 (and yes I was aware of it when I purchased the ticket) as I think it is very high for essentially two minutes work and does not feel commensurate with a change of flight dates.

KLM charges that price as you booked into a cheaper booking class, had you purchased a fully flexible fare in a higher booking class you would have been able to change for free

It isn't about the amount of work that they have to do, it's about making sure they retain some definition in their pricing structure, if they only charged £5 for changes in your booking class many customers would no longer see value in their fully flexible top tier products.

alanrowell

Most airlines wouldn't allow you to change a ticket so you'd lose everything except the taxes

SW17

alanrowell wrote: »

Most airlines wouldn't allow you to change a ticket so you'd lose everything except the taxes

That's a generalisation which is not true. As pointed out above, it completely depends on the fare class booked with most airlines (maybe a few low cost carriers excepted). If you book a more flexible fare, which will of course cost more, you have a greater ability to change.

The more flexible the fare (and with legacy carriers like KLM there will be a scale of flexibility across a number of booking classes), the less the fees are likely to be. Your comment will usually only apply to the lowest fare classes.

Sounds like the OP has booked a fare class at the lower end, but not in the very lowest classes, as they were able to change for a fee. They don't mention the route, but £150 feels like a fee for a longer route, not just UK-Netherlands.