Bereavement Fares

There are lots of things you don't want to think about when preparing for a funeral, but one that stands out is travel.

If you need to fly to attend the funeral, you're often stuck paying expensive last minute fares. If you're traveling with other family, you may have limited seat options, forcing you to sit apart at a time when you probably don't want to spend a few hours sitting close to strangers.

Growing up, I remember hearing about bereavement fares. This was a discounted fare that may also have offered free flexibility to change flights.

Unfortunately as of around 2014, most US airlines stopped offering bereavement fares. For the ones that do still offer them, like Delta, you need to call reservations and book the tickets through the phone, not online.

Since you typically don't plan a funeral 3 weeks in advance, and researching airfares is one of the last things I wanted to spend time on, I wasn't able to find a lot of good options.

My dad died on a Saturday, and Sunday I was on a flight. Since it wasn't as urgent for my wife and kids to be there immediately, we had a little more flexibility to schedule their flight, and they flew two days later.

I was able to defray the cost slightly by using airmiles, but the flights still ended up being a large, unplanned expense.

While you can’t plan ahead for funeral travel, you can start tracking assets and other important information. Start now with your free Estate Map below.

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