How Freebird Can Help Your Cancelled or Delayed Flight for $19

Walt Disney World Deals & Money
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Interesting article on Freebird, a service that books you on the next available flight on any airline to your destination if you have delays/cancellations. It costs $19 per one-way itinerary, which you must pre-pay two days before departure - if they rebook you, this is all you pay. The article’s writer used it for a flight that was delayed and got booked first class on the next Delta flight, which would have cost $1,200.

This is a great backup option for people who book on low-cost carriers who have a habit of canceling flights - I’m looking at you, Frontier…

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This is a really interesting idea! Thank you.

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My one question about this is if they have a sustainable business model. I have a sinking thing that this will be something like MoviePass, which was great while it lasted. For that reason, I am not going to sign up well in advance - I’m going to sign up just before the 2-day cutoff for a flight I want to protect.

However, if I had a bargain basement fare and I was concerned that the carrier was going to cancel it before the 2-day cutoff I would go ahead and do it.

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I would say this is very similar to an insurance model. As long as they have their actuarial tables aligned properly, they will come out ahead. It’s just a matter of enough people signing up and not needing it to counterbalance the cost of people who end up using the service. They may need to recalibrate the cost to make it work as they collect more data on their users.

Most flights aren’t cancelled, so in theory it should work unless only the highest risk passengers sign up.

Much different from the MoviePass, where once you have a pass, you can take advantage and go to more movies. It’s 100% in the hands of the user to get value from the membership, and out of the hands of MoviePass. Not a good model.

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Thanks for sharing. Very interesting.

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I actually just looked a little further into this. They have been around since 2015… Other than a small price increase, it looks like they are going strong in the corporate world. They have a bunch of large clients like Discovery networks.

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