ATLANTA — With the FAA implementing flight reductions, it could affect you no matter when you bought your ticket.
Flight cuts start on Friday morning at the world’s busiest airport, and 39 others.
“Looking specifically at the Atlanta airport, rough numbers provided by Cerium Analytics actually state that 17,000 scheduled seats could be impacted starting on Friday,” said Katy Nastro with Going.com.
Nastro said if you’re traveling soon, make sure your ticket has flexibility. “Basic Economy” brings restrictions.
“We don’t want people booking any basic economy tickets at this point just because we don’t know if every airline will put out a waiver being able to make changes at no additional cost,” Nastro said.
Delta and United Airlines are offering waivers so flyers can change tickets.
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It’s also suggested that you get your airline’s app, so you have a direct way to make changes.
And check if you have points.
“This is a good time to book with points for your backup flights,” Nastro said. “Points have a more flexible and sort of later cancellation policy to be able to get those points back, versus a basic economy ticket, where you bought it, and if you don’t use it, you lose it.”
“So, at this point, is buying travel insurance a good idea? Would it protect us?” Channel 2’s Linda Stouffer asked Nastro.
“For a forward-looking travel plan, say for the next few weeks, travelers can look into travel insurance. However, not every policy is going to include coverage because of the shutdown. And so, we don’t want people dishing out for extra expense when it might not even apply to their travels. This is a very unknown scenario,” Nastro said.
One reason is that the government shutdown is not an unforeseen circumstance if you buy travel insurance today.
Channel 2 consumer advisor Clark Howard said you can look for “cancel for any reason” tickets, which cost more, and generally don’t cover the whole cost.
Also, international flights may not be affected as much.
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