Huge Changes to JetBlue’s Price Decrease Policy – Now Only 5 Days!

For most airlines, after 24 hours of booking your flight you are locked into the price. No price adjustments and no canceling the flight without a fee (of course if you have status that could change things). However, there are three extremely flexible airlines when it comes to price decreases – Southwest, JetBlue, and Alaska Airlines. While Southwest has the most favorable policy of all, JetBlue and Alaska Airlines are still significantly better then any of the other domestic airlines (i.e., Delta, American, United, Frontier, etc.).

Up until now, with JetBlue, if you’ve booked a flight in the past 14 days and the price has decreased, JetBlue will give you a credit voucher for the price difference. Well this just changed! As of December 4, 2017, you now have a 5 day grace period, it is no longer a full two weeks!

If you do in fact see that your price has decreased in price within the 5 day period, you’ll have to call JetBlue to get it processed – it cannot be done online. After you book a flight, I suggest checking daily to see if your fare has in fact decreased! JetBlue will not do this for you, it is up to you.

The voucher you receive is valid for an entire year from the date it is issued and is actually very flexible on how it can be used. It will sit in your travel bank (which you can see online in your JetBlue account) and can be used to book a flight for you or someone else.

The only caveat to this “perk†is if a flight goes down in price due to a coupon code you need to apply, it will not allow the voucher to go through. So let’s say you purchase a flight for $200 and two days later JetBlue comes out with a promo code offering 10% off all flights. The flight price is still $200, but with the promo it would come down to $180 (let’s not take taxes into the scenario). You unfortunately will not be able to get a $20 voucher for the difference. The actual flight must have gone down in price without a coupon code being applied.

Now, there are some scenarios where you’ll still be able to receive the fare difference after the 5 days:

• If you have Mosaic status, you can always cancel your flight for no fee and then re-book at the lower fare.
• If you flight is more then 60 days out, you can cancel your flight with a $75 charge. IF your flight has decreased in price more then $75, you can always cancel, pay the $75 fee, and then rebook at the lower price.
• If your flight is within 60 days, the price to cancel depends on the price of the flight. If it is $100 or less, then it is a $75 fee. Fares between $100-$149 will have a $100 fee and fares over $150 will have a $150 fee. If your flight has gone down in price significantly, then even with the fee, it still might be worth canceling and re-booking.

While JetBlue has significantly decreased the length of time you have to get a credit if the price decreases, I still do appreciate that this is an option. You can read more about Southwest’s and Alaska Airline’s price adjustment policies.

Thanks to reader Jonathan at Autoslash for letting me know of these changes!