Hello everyone! Hope you are doing well! I have a doubt which requires your assistance. I have to visit the US for some observerships. I have booked a roundtrip from Kolkata to New York and I am flying Airindia. Though the departure dates are fixed, the return dates still aren't. We depart on April 30th and the return booking is in July 3rd, 2017. However, circumstances might change, so we might need to delay our return till 4th August 2017. We will only know of our final plans once we arrive in the US, sometime late in May. Can we change our return flight at that point of time? How do we go about it? What might be the charges and regulations? We are flying Economy and we had booked online. Since the booking was made from India on an Indian credit card, are we going to pay with INR or USD at the time of the change? Do we still need to use the same card as well? Thank you for going through and for your valuable suggestions!
Economy class has a lot of different sub classes and you will need to check your ticket to see what code is it booked under. Discounted tickets normally have a higher charge for changing dates and some tickets are even non changeable meaning you will have to buy a new ticket. It is best to talk to Air India customer support to find out what are the charges for changing the inward journey's date. Some tickets would carry no charge atall, it depends on what class your ticket is.
Thank you for your reply! I have checked and found that the return travel is "Economy -S". Unfortunately, I have also located a line that says "Changes not permitted online" and " Cancel & refund not permitted online". Does this mean I can't change them in any way?
That means there is no way you can change it online. You may need to contact an agent or call Air India customer support for that. As I said before you should speak to customer support and they will tell you what the charges are and how to go about it. I know they are able to take a debit or credit card over the phone so that shouldn't be a problem.