Postponing trip because of death in the family

Do you have travel insurance? If so, check the policy. It may or may not cover the contengiencies you mention. If you don't have it, I'd look into getting it ASAP- and getting a policy that covers all reasons for cancelation.

Sharon, Sorry to hear about your brother-in-law. I haven't postponed a trip because of a death, but I have cancelled/postponed business trips a number of times for various reasons. Assuming that you don't have cancellation insurance, what you need to do is carefully read the terms and conditions of your airline ticket. In most cases, you can change for a penalty fee. When you rebook, you pay the change fee plus any difference in fare price. Also, tickets have expiration dates, so you need to reuse the ticket before or it loses all of its value. I will give you a hypothetical example. Suppose I had a ticket that I bought for $1000 for May travel with a change penalty of $250. I reschedule for September and find the fare in September is $1100. I would pay a total of $350 (the penalty plus the fare difference). Many of the airlines do offer a discount for bereavement fares, but it is not much. I sincerely hope that you won't have to take up any of these options.

I believe you would only be eligible for a bereavement fare if you had to quickly get to the place where a relative has died (i.e., relative passes away in North Carolina and you need to fly out to Charlotte at the last minute to attend a funeral), not because you missed out on your previously scheduled flight to Europe for a vacation and you are hoping to get a discounted fare to take your trip after the funeral is over. I also believe you have to show some proof to the airline to get the bereavement fare (i.e., copy of death certificate from the funeral home). I'm sure most airlines would have a section on this somewhere in the fine print of their websites, or you could call United's Customer Service and just ask what the policy is. B&B might let you off the hook if you explain the situation and/or they can re-book your room to someone else. It's entirely at their discretion though.

It might be too late to get "any reason" travel insurance. Usually they have to be booked within a week or so of booking your flights and such. You might still look to see what is available.

My mother died in Texas while I was here in Hawaii and I called a couple of airlines trying to get a "bereavement" fare for immediate travel. I ended up paying just under the price shown on their web site. After discussing this with a Travel Agency owner that I have known for about 40 years, I was told to contact a travel agent about getting that type of fare before buying directly from the airline. Unfortunately, in my state of confusion, I did not think to contact them in the first place. They said they could have saved me several hundred dollars for what I paid. Apparently the TA's have access to a different set of software than is available to folks like me.

Helpful comments. Thanks. I would never expect an airline to give me a discounted rate for a missed vacation because of a death in the family. I was only questioning a discounted rate to attend a funeral. I will definitely check with a travel agent first if this does come to pass. Thanks again.

Sharon, even with insurance that covers everything the death has to be of what they consider an immediate relative,, a mother , father, brother , sister, or child.. don't know if they would count a BIL,, just saying, check.
It may be easiest to just postpone trip for a few more weeks.. Hopefully this is all for naught and it turns out fine.. people can and do turn around from the worst situations sometimes. Good luck.

Sorry I can't help the original poster but wanted to add a few thoughts on the question of bereavement fares. Those can make sense because you probably have to book with extremely short notice when few sales fares are available. But they are usually calculated on the base fares - which are really high. So when I called Air Canada a couple of years ago after my grandmother died they quoted me 50% off the base fare of over $4K for a round trip YYC-FRA .... we are talking economy here not business class! I was lucky that there was still room left in a seat sale and I got the ticket for "only" $1700. You can't be choosy when you are booking less than 24 hrs before leaving. Oh, and make sure you get a hold on the death certificate (or doctor's letter in case of imminent death) of your loved one to provide to the airline. Those kinds of arrangements have to be done in person/by phone. You can't do them via the internet. Mind you, this was probably the best customer service experience I've ever had with Air Canada. Extremely courteous, friendly, helpful, and professional. Can't say that of many of the other calls I had to make to their call centre :-(