Some Things I Wish I Didn't Need To Know

Topic(s): me
2008-03-17 01:20:11 US/Pacific

My Grandfather died today. He was 90-something years old, perhaps close to 100. He definitely lived a full life.

I last visited my Grandfather mid of last year. He was in a retirement home at that time. I'm not really sure how much he remembered me during that visit. My previous visit was in the middle of 2000. He definitely remembered me at that time, although it was very sad to see how far he had fallen since 1998. That was the year his wife (my Grandmother) of 50-something years passed away.

My Grandfather had been teetering for a while. We were prepared for his passing. Though I know laying him to rest will be very difficult and emotional time for me, his passing was not a surprise and that makes it somewhat easier to accept.

My grandparents lived near us (Mom, Dad, brother, myself) in Texas for the better part of the 80's and all of the 90's. After my Grandmother's passing, my Grandfather decided he'd feel better living the balance of his years back home in Michigan. That's where the funeral will be held.

So here I am here in California. Today is Sunday. The services will be held on Friday. I need to book air travel on short notice, which is usually expensive. I know that (most) airlines have bereavement policies. But what I didn't know until today is that the policies are shams.

To be fair, I talked to a representative from just one airline - Northwest Airlines. But all airlines policies are similar. I'm not sure if it's fair to extrapolate my experiences to all airlines, but I'll assume so.

Here's what I learned from speaking with a Northwest Airlines representative on the phone. Northwest Airlines' bereavement policy:

1. grants some discount on the regular fare.
2. is good only for bookings within three days of the scheduled travel.
3. is good only for economy Q class fares or worse.

The problems are:

1. the discount is not calculable in any predictive fashion. Thus searching for travel online and calculating the true fare is impossible.
2. fares increase dramatically from four to three days from the scheduled travel day. The increase is much higher than the bereavement discount. Thus one should hope to never need a bereavement discount, especially during a period of bereavement.
3. only undesirable travel routes and times have any economy Q class fares. "Q class" seems to be a contrived distinction created to coerce people in my position on undesirable flights.

The end result is it's cheaper and much more convenient to pay the full fare without regard to any bereavement policy. Thus my conclusion is Northwest Airlines' bereavement policy is in place just so Northwest Airlines can claim to have a bereavement policy.

name:
email:
url:
response: