Booked airfare - is this normal?

[SourPatchMom]

This is only our 5th time cruising and we live close to Galveston so we've never booked airfare.   We did for this Alaskan cruise.  Requested 1 day earlier arrival.  Reservations came in day of.  We're past the change date and apparently if we change our flight we loose 75% of the fare. Is this normal?  We had booked the hotel in advance as well, guess we gotta cancel that and our fun day in Seattle. 

[hallux]

Go look at your confirmation documents you received when you first booked - do you see it listed that you wanted to arrive a day early?  If not - you'd be SOL, you didn't confirm that what you requested was added to your reservation.  Someone that's done it should be able to tell you where it will appear on your confirmation PDF.  When I used the air perk in 2019 it showed as part of the total itinerary, showing me arriving the day before.  It was on the second page of the confirmation.

 

Did you book through a TA?  This would fall on them.

Edited July 27 by hallux

[julig22]

24 minutes ago, SourPatchMom said:

This is only our 5th time cruising and we live close to Galveston so we've never booked airfare.   We did for this Alaskan cruise.  Requested 1 day earlier arrival.  Reservations came in day of.  We're past the change date and apparently if we change our flight we loose 75% of the fare. Is this normal?  We had booked the hotel in advance as well, guess we gotta cancel that and our fun day in Seattle. 

You need to check your confirmation to see what it says. If you requested a deviation, it would show a 1, under # of nights pre. And there would be a $25 Air Deviation credit in the charges line detail. If those are there, then they should make a correction. If those aren't on your confirmation, then the request was never documented.