United Airlines has released its Super Bowl ad, with Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Nights), promoting being a super fan – and changing your tickets at no cost. You can buy your tickets for next year’s Super Bowl now, believing your team will make it, and you don’t lose the value of your ticket if you have to cancel because they don’t. But this is super misleading because of basic economy and expiration of travel credits.

The commercial promotes “No fees to change your flight. Ever.” Here’s what United’s website has to say about that,

Changes are not permitted on Basic Economy tickets if travel begins on or after February 1, 2022. …If you’re flying on a Basic Economy ticket, you can’t change your flight unless you upgrade to Economy or a premium cabin first.

You don’t get charged a fee. You actually get charged a higher fare. And they’re technically different in the airline’s systems, but to the customer they’re being charged more to change their ticket either way.

United was first to make elimination of change fees, originally a temporary pandemic move, a lasting feature. Change fees had gone from $25 to $50 and eventually to generally $200 on a domestic ticket. Buy two one ways and you’d have $200 change fees on each to change plans. Other airlines quickly followed (even more generously, causing United to revisit some of its restrictions).

Over the course of the last 3.5 years, United reports that more than 10 million passengers changed their flights without a fee. Fees for these changes would have totaled $2 billion.

• 3.6 million switched the time of day they flew
  
• 1.8 million extended their trip
  
• 1.5 million changed their origin or destination airport
  
• 300,000 converted their ticket from domestic to international or vice versa

Let’s be clear. Many of these changes wouldn’t have happened if the fees were in place, so United did not give up $2 billion in revenue. And that suggests the value of many of the changes was less than the old change fee (so value to consumers was less than that $2 billion).

This isn’t all incremental changes, though, people changed their tickets in the past. United lost change fee revenue. However they kept customers. Often the new purchases were more expensive, so there’s incremental revenue to the airline. People also become more willing to purchase, hence United’s Super Bowl ad pitch that you can buy next year’s tickets now.

Always watch for the expiration date on credits. Generally speaking United requires you to travel within one year of original ticket purchase. You can’t buy a Super Bowl ticket for 2025, then roll the credit over to the 2026 Super Bowl. Southwest’s travel credits, on the other hand, do not expire.

The end of change fees on non-basic economy fares has meant that I’m more loyal to larger airlines. I know I can make a change and retain ticket value, so I want that value to be with an airline I’m likely to fly again. I’m reluctant to buy tickets with an airline that has a small presence at my home airport, especially if I’m going to have to use any credit for travel within a year of purchase.

At the start of the pandemic United along with JetBlue were the worst airlines for providing refunds to customers for cancelled flights. And it’s easy to forget that Southwest already didn’t have change fees. That used to be a differentiator. They still don’t charge for up to two checked bags per passenger. Other major airlines started charging for checked bags back in 2008.

Let’s assume, though, that the number of changes being made to tickets with U.S. airlines each year is about 5x the numbers reported by United. That’s changes that would have cost $10 billion in the past, or about $2.85 billion per year.