Bereavement Fares (vacation, airlines, price, flights)

[cleosmom]

I found out that airlines really don't believe in doing such a thing anymore.

I spent the night before I booked our flights (2 tix) scoping out the prices, next morning I call the number the funeral director gave me only to find out not much different from what I found.

So, to bury my mom next to dad we spent $1500 for two round trip tickets. Only wanted to stay a week, but that would have run another $500

Anyone else run into this problem?

[BlueWillowPlate]

I never thought they were that great to begin with.
I once spent over $700 to fly to SFO from Denver to attend my cousin's funeral in Half Moon Bay. That was the bereavement fare they offered; this was before Priceline.
The next time I had to fly for a funeral, I used Priceline. It was a heck of a lot cheaper.
My condolences on your sad loss.

[cleosmom]

The ironic thing was on the day she died, my brother booked a last minute flight that ran him RT less than $600. I'm guessing they wanted to fill the seat??

Thanks for the sympathy.

[MaggieZ]

Sorry for your loss.
My Bf used it when his mom had a heartattack and they gave him 50% off on an open ended ticket. Could it depend on the airline? He used US Airways. That was years ago so maybe it's just gotten to the point where airlines don't do much of anything for people anymore.

[LaceyEx]

So sorry for your loss. Really shows airlines have a heart!

[Crew Chief]

Our condolences, Cleosmom... When my dad died, we were able to get fairly reasonable fares from Indiana to FLL (Fort Lauderdale) My dad died several days after I pgraded to First Seat Driver at my carrier. I sure wanted to have him ride with me. Sigh...

[okaydorothy]

We had to fly aer Lingus a few times when my in laws were sick and my fil eventually died.

Yep, they cost us a fortune on the berevement tickets.

But on the return trip for my dh they upgraded him to first class. He deserved it.

Sorry for you loss.

dorothy

[nicolem]

I am sorry for your loss. My sister died actually 2 years ago today. I had to fly from New Hampshire to Florida and it is school vacation week up here so flights were not only limited but very very expensive. We looked at flying out of Logan, Manchester, Portland, Burlington and Providence. It was very hard to find a flight with any seats and the few we found were outrageous. It cost my hubby and I $3,000 to fly from Manchester to Tampa and back. When we called and asked about bereavement time we were told-and also read on a few websites- that they claimed their normal fares are cheap enough that they do not need to offer bereavement fares.

Nicole

[nitram]

When we went to fly a family funeral, the flight attendants told us that they stopped the bereavement fares as too many people were abusing the privelege that were not really on bereavement.

[Ultrarunner]

My Mother needed to fly last minute to attend a funeral and just couldn't get a ticket... a Lufthansa agent could sense a problem and asked... so Mom told her about the funeral.

The agent said she would work on it and a little over an hour the agent called back with a confirmed seat on a flight that had been sold out for weeks...

The price was the same as if she would have reserved in advance...

United and American only could offer First Class at about 5 times what Mom paid with Lufthansa.