There are various ways to offset the stress of buying an airplane ticket — because who knows what the future will bring? Probably not giant fare drops, but you never know: Murphy’s Law is as applicable to airfares as it is to anything else.
Any U.S. carrier will offer refunds within 24 hours of purchase — unless (and this is a big asterisk) you’d previously “held” the fare for the preceding 24 hours, which you can do on American and other carriers. Speaking of, our personal trick is to repeatedly hold-and-cancel fares until we’re sure we’ve got the right one, ensuring every 24 hours that there are additional seats left at the original price. (It sounds insane but this has saved us hundreds of bucks over the years, and is appropriate for travel commitment-phobes.) We don’t like the flying experience at United, but we’re huge fans of its FareLock, even if some complain it’s a ripoff: Pay a small fee and you can lock in the fare before buying your ticket for up to seven days.
Leave it to Jetblue, though, to shove all this nonsense aside.
The airline with some of the most legroom in the business has an additional trick up its sleeve: a 14-day price protection policy. If the fare drops within two weeks of purchase, you’ll get the difference, in the form of a voucher toward your travel bank. (So, yeah — it’s like a gift card. But Delta’s not giving nothing, so OK.) Sure — it’ll mean keeping an eye on the fare, which is why some experts suggest setting up a fare alert on the flight you just bought. And yeah, fares tend to rise, rather than fall. But it’s an easy way to put some money aside for future travel — all for the cost of a flight search and, if warranted, a call to the airline to trigger the refund.
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