Airlines Reverse No-Refund Policy for Marines’ Tickets

Yes, Virginia, there will be holiday airline-ticket refunds for Marines whisked off to Somalia, despite the airlines’ earlier assertions that no refunds were due military people because they weren’t going off to a war.

After pressure from travel agents and inquiries from the media, several U.S. carriers said Friday that for certain cases they had changed their non-refundable policy for tickets bought in advance. The move was in response to dozens of requests from Marines and their dependents, who suddenly found themselves holding airline tickets with either no opportunity or no desire to use them.

“It seems like the reasonable and right thing to do,” American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith said. “We did get calls last week from enough people who inquired about the refunds. So we decided to change our policy.”

Smith said American notified its ticket agents of the policy change on Monday. By Friday, most major carriers had followed American’s lead.

“Delta will refund tickets that are normally non-refundable to military personnel whose travel plans through Jan. 15 are affected by order to report for duty in Somalia,” Delta spokesman Rick Beckett said.

Industry and Marine Corps officials said they had no estimate on how many military personnel and their dependents would be able to take advantage of the policy changes, but Beckett said it was “a substantial number.”

Several industry officials said privately that the policy changes were also due in part to the efforts of Oceanside travel agent Ray Burgess, a crusty, 76-year-old former Marine. Burgess owns AB Cruise and Air Travel Lure, a travel agency located near Camp Pendleton whose clients are largely Marines and their dependents.

“When the deployments to Somalia began, a couple of kids called and inquired about the refunds. I told them to bring them in, and I discovered the tickets were non-refundable,” Burgess said. “I called United (Airlines), and they said that since Somalia was not a war, they weren’t going to refund the tickets.”

Burgess, who has owned the travel agency since 1945, said he kept calling the airlines every day, asking officials to reconsider their policy.