American Airlines extends free change and cancellation policy

Editor's note: This post has been updated to reflect AA's extension of its travel waiver.

Since the coronavirus pandemic started, most airlines have been waiving change and cancellation fees for new bookings. With the situation taking longer to recover than originally anticipated, most airlines have extended their flexible booking policies to include new bookings made through mid-September. American Airlines initially had a major exception to its updated policy, but has since reversed course with a customer-friendly move.

In early June, American announced that it would tighten up its flexible booking policy and start to exclude basic economy and AAdvantage award tickets. Of the "big three" U.S. carriers, American was the only one to place such restrictions on tickets. However, American has since quietly backtracked on this and is now once again offering free changes for basic economy tickets.

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Change waiver extension

On July 29, American began allowing all paid and award tickets purchased by Sept. 8, 2020 to be canceled or changed without any fees so long as new travel occurs by Dec. 31, 2021. The purchase-by date has now been extended to Sept. 30, 2020.

It's also worth noting that starting Sept. 9, 2020 American's new award fee structure will kick in, allowing free award-ticket changes and redeposits at least 60 days in advance.

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In describing the July 29 policy update to TPG, a spokesperson of American Airlines explained, "We are always evaluating the marketplace and looking to provide our customers with the most flexibility for their travel plans during the Covid-19 pandemic." The airline also recently made a positive change to its seat fee refund policy.

As a reminder, eligible tickets are allowed one free change and you cannot get a cash refund unless the airline cancels the flight. If you rebook to a more expensive flight, you will have to pay the difference in fare.

Related: Airline coronavirus change and cancellation policies

Bottom line

With flexibility not being a differentiator anymore, basic economy has become a lot less relevant during the pandemic. As a result, it may even disappear in the future. In an interview with TPG's founder and CEO, Brian Kelly, JetBlue's COO, Joanna Geraghty, mentioned that "flexibility will be a significant component of the future of air travel. As we move through this experience, it'll be interesting to see how customers use change [policies] going forward. Long-term, it will definitely be part of the purchase decision." If airlines keep extending their flexible booking policies for all ticket types, travelers will have a lot less reason to buy-up from basic economy.