Bereavement Fares Join Your Dead Relatives
May 31st, 2006 | By Jared BlankAccording to a Wall Street Journal article, airline bereavement fares are disappearing as fast as your elderly third cousins. You used to be able to go to relatives funerals for 50% off of full fares. Now, US Airways has eliminated these fares altogether. Continental has reduced the discount to 5% off fares below $499 and 10% off fares above $500. The other part of this that sucks, is that you’ll now have to pay a change fee if the date of the funeral changes, whereas bereavement fares used to have no change penalty. Way to go!
How do they find people to interview for these stories? Seriously, how do they know who recently had a bad experience trying to get a berevement fare? I figure one of the people may have contacted them (hence the idea for the story) but what about the rest of them?