Before flight cancelations, one must know the cancelation policies. Thus if you need to cancel a United flight, first of all, you have got to know all the United Airlines Flight Cancellation Policy.
By the way, if you want to know how to cancel a United flight, you can refer to the how-to-cancel-a-united-flight section in the blog. It is given after the following section that talks about United Airlines Cancelation policy.
United Airlines Flight Cancellation Policy
United Airlines Cancelation policy can be divided into the following parts for reducing the complexity.
- Flight Cancelation within 24 Hours of Making Reservations
- Flight Cancelation within 24 Hours of Making Reservations
This classification of the cancelation policy is based on the 24 hours time frame. The cancelation policy can also be classified on the basis of travel classes. However, here that part is included under the second category, that is, Flight cancelation after 24 hours of booking.
Anyways, let’s discuss the policy.
Flight Cancelation Within 24 Hours of Making Reservations
This section of the blog deals with United Airlines 24 hours cancelation policy in detail.
It touches on every aspect related to the policy. Moreover, if you cancel your United Flight within 24 hours of booking, the 24 hours cancelation policy of United Airlines applies to you.
United Airlines 24 Hours Cancelation Policy — Conditions to Be Satisfied
If the following time conditions satisfy, you are eligible for the benefits of United Airlines Flight Cancellation Policy 24*7.
The time conditions are as follows; they are a total of two conditions:
- You cancel your United flight within 24 hours of booking; and,
- You have booked the flight at least 7 days — if not more — before the scheduled departure.
Apart from the preceding time conditions, there is another condition too. It is not a condition referring to some sort of timeframe. Instead of that, it is as follows:
- You have booked directly through United — without the help of any third party or travel agency.
The third condition is that you must book through the means approved as the official United Airlines, i.e., united.com, or the United app.
These are the three conditions that you have to satisfy before you become capable of being exempted from cancelation fees under 24 hours cancelation policy of United Airlines.
United Airlines 24 Hours Cancelation Policy — Benefits
If you are eligible for the application of United Airlines 24 Hours Cancelation Policy because you satisfy all the conditions mentioned under it, you are entitled to the following benefits:
- You don’t need to pay a cancelation fee for canceling your flight; and,
- You become eligible for a full refund.
These are two benefits that emerge out of the application of the 24 hours policy of United.
United Airlines 24 Hours Cancelation Policy — Final Conclusion
The final thing on the United 24 Hours Cancelation Policy is that if you cancel your United flight within 24 hours of booking and your travel starts at least seven days from the day of booking.
Thus if the following is your situation, you will benefit from United Airlines 24 Hours cancelation policy. The situation has been repeated a lot of times. However, one more time, it is as follows:
- You are still sitting within 24 hours of making your United reservations; and,
- You have at least seven days before you finally depart from the departure airport.
Flight Cancelation after 24 Hours of Booking
Different cancelation policies apply to you if you cancel a United Airlines flight after 24 hours of making the reservation. For example, if you book your flight right now, and after a few hours, you decide to cancel it, the 24 hours cancelation policy applies to you. And, if you cancel your flight after 24 hours, cancelation policies vary as per your travel class.
Therefore now let’s discuss such cancelation policies too. United, in general, offers the following types of tickets:
- Basic Economy Ticket
- Non-Refundable Tickets
- Refundable Tickets
- Award Tickets
Below all the corresponding cancelation policies are discussed:
Basic Economy Ticket — Cancelation Policy
Previously, you were only allowed to cancel your Basic Economy ticket within 24 hours of booking. And, after that — 24 hours of booking — it was not allowed to cancel the ticket type even for a fee.
However, now you can cancel your basic economy ticket even after 24 hours of booking. The recent basic economy cancelation policy states that you can cancel your basic economy ticket after 24 hours of booking. Thus you don’t need to get worried about it.
You can cancel a basic economy United flight ticket for a cancelation fee when not canceled within 24 hours of booking. Thus now cancelation of basic economy tickets is allowed for a cancelation fee when 24 hours after making the reservation has passed.
Now, after the cancelation, you will become entitled to receive Credit of the same value as the ticket. And, this credit you can use for the purchase of a new United flight. However, all the credits come with life — in other words, they are not valid forever, they come with limited validity.
If you don’t use such credits before they expire, they will go useless. Thus always use them before the validity. That is the biggest drawback of the credit issuance system instead of refunds.
Basic Economy Cancelation Fees
After the recent changes to United Airlines Basic Economy cancelation policy, you can cancel a Basic Economy flight even after 24 hours of booking.
The scheme of cancelation fees as per the recent updates is discussed below.
Domestic Flights:
| One-Way | $50 |
| Round-Trip | $100 |
International Flights:
| One-Way | $100 |
| Round-Trip | $200 |
Non-Refundable Tickets – Cancelation Policy
For the cancelation of non-refundable tickets after 24 hours of booking, you have to pay a cancelation fee. Thus after 24 hours of booking, canceling a non-refundable ticket costs a cancelation fee.
The cancelation fees for the cancelation of domestic and international flights are given below:
| For a domestic flight: | $200 |
| For an international flight: | $400 |
After the cancelation, you become eligible for getting an eCredit of the same value as the canceled ticket. You can use the credit towards the purchase of a new United flight. However, if you cancel after the departure, you receive nothing — no credit at all.
Credits so received remain valid for a year; the year is counted from the day of the original booking.
Non-Refundable Tickets — Cancelation Flexibility
Apart from any reasons, if you have to cancel a United non-refundable ticket because of the following reasons, you are eligible for a full refund after the cancelation:
- Death of the passenger; or
- Death of the traveling companion of the passenger; or
- You have to cancel your ticket because of orders from the military.
Under the cases mentioned above, if you have to cancel your non-refundable ticket, you will get a full refund in the same manner as you used for the booking.
Note: You still need to pay a cancelation fee for canceling your non-refundable flight ticket.
Refundable Tickets — Cancelation Policy
After 24 hours of booking, you can cancel a refundable ticket with — perhaps — a cancelation fee for a full refund. The magnitude of the cancelation fees depends on fare types along with other things.
So, if you need to cancel a refundable ticket, it is very simple. You can do so with perhaps a cancelation fee. And, because it is refundable, you will get refunded within a reasonable period of time.
Award Tickets — Cancelation Policy
If you booked an award flight and now, after 24 hours of booking, you need to cancel it, the cancelation policy for such flight tickets follows.
You can cancel your award flight without a cancelation fee and even get your miles redeposited into your account only if you follow the time limit of cancelation at least 30 days before the departure.
Further, if you cancel your award flight less than 30 days before the departure, you are required to pay a fee for the redeposition of the miles into your MileagePlus account.
In addition to that, if you wish to get the credited miles back into your MileagePlus account after the departure, you have to pay a deposit fee of 125 dollars for the same.
How to Cancel a United Airlines Flight?
In this section, how you can cancel a United flight is discussed. All the ways, you can cancel your United flights are listed below. Thus if you need to learn how to cancel, you can refer to any of the following sections.
How to Cancel a United Flight? — by United Airlines Manage Booking
You can cancel your united flight by United Airlines Manage Booking though for that first you need to access the manage booking option. The entire step-by-step process is given below:
- Open your favorite browser;
- Google United Airlines;
- Click on the link to the United Airlines official website;
- Next, click on the My Trips button: refer to the image below;
As soon as you click on the button, the following search engine comes before you. And, it demands you to put the following essential pieces of your booking information into it:
- Confirmation Number; and,
- Last Name.
- Here, fill in the search engine with both the confirmation code and last name;
- Then click on the Search button; and,
- After that, locate the flight cancelation option and choose it for the same.
That has been what you need to know to cancel your United flight by the manage booking option. You can also use the United app for canceling your United flight.
The process will be the same whether you use the official website or the app. However, if you cannot use your laptop, use the United app to cancel United flights; that is always a better option.
How to Cancel a United Flight? — by Phone Number
Apart from the manage booking option, there is also an alternative that you can use to cancel your flight. The option is cancelation by phone call.
Thus alternatively, you can also cancel your flight reservation by giving United a phone call. You can easily find the flight cancelation phone number of United on the official website of United Airlines.
However, online cancelation by United Airlines Manage Booking through either the official website or the United app is always better than cancelation with the help of a contact number. The biggest reason is as follows: by the phone call option, you may encounter long waiting hours.
A big number of people travel United Airlines and thus many cancel their United flights on a daily basis. With that, it is very likely that you may need to wait for a very long time before anyone helps you in canceling your flight reservation at United Airlines.
Explore More ” United Airlines”