Plane and train tickets: what to expect at the start of the school year

Could this be the end of the non-modifiable post? With the proliferation of mobile platforms and websites, companies can now change a ticket with disconcerting ease, in a few clicks and without human intervention. For example, the SNCF made Prem's tickets flexible a few months ago, while increasing the modification fees from € 5 to € 15 in the two days preceding departure. On the air side, Air France, for its part, has adopted another formula: the “Branded fare”. It consists in ensuring that the three different tariffs - the non-modifiable Light, the Standard and the Modifiable Flex - remain accessible to the customer until the last seat on sale. Adopted at the same time as Delta and KLM, this is a proposal for packages with different services: luggage, flexibility, seat, etc. Which therefore lead to a price difference.

If in an ideal world for companies, there were only passengers reserving their tickets definitively, without ever changing their minds ... But the Covid crisis has passed there and gave travelers the taste to flexibility. In an attempt to attract more customers by meeting their new expectations, all carriers have dropped the switch penalties. But for how long ?

Rules applied from August 30

The SNCF is the first to replace, as from 30 August, the penalties for train changes. However, these conditions are undoubtedly set to evolve as the commercial legacy left by former travel director Rachel Picard has shown its limits. Thus, tickets that can be changed at no cost, which no longer existed in the second except for companies, were reintroduced on the sly. You can now again buy a changeable second ticket free of charge and without fare adjustment on a TGV.

Read also: SNCF: reservation, reimbursement ... What you need to know if you take the train this summer

At Air France , nothing changes. Even if the recovery in medium-haul traffic is much better than expected, the French company has decided to continue pricing flexibility until a later date. For its subsidiary Transavia , the flexibility period has been extended until October 31, 2020. Thus the Basic and Plus fares, which can usually be exchanged for a penalty of € 50 plus the fare readjustment, may be modified without this penalty.

Another method at the British low-cost easyJet . Usually, standard tickets can be changed up to 60 days before departure with a penalty of £ 25 (then £ 32 until the day of departure). Since the start of the crisis, the changeover period without penalty has increased to 14 days before departure, obviously with a price adjustment. This information is given in English and in pounds sterling on the company's website.

Finally, for Vueling , as for the SNCF, the period of leniency ends on August 30. From this date, holders of Basic and Optima tickets will have to pay € 50 to modify them (in addition to the price adjustment), unless they have subscribed to the “time flex” service, at € 7.5 per trip, which authorizes a change without charge. Note that the Spanish company is the only one to take into account the date of the purchase, while the others apply the conditions according to the date of the flight.