Be warned, United Airlines jet-setters: Boarding passes to sunny Florida are not interchangeable, even if some of those tickets may force certain travelers to leave their political baggage at home.
United Airlines is pushing back on a recent report that it would allow air passengers to avoid flying into Florida’s recently renamed President Donald J. Trump International Airport if they balked at the name change.
Formerly known as Palm Beach International, the airport in West Palm Beach was rechristened with the new moniker earlier this month.
On Thursday, airline industry blog Live and Let’s Fly published a report relaying United’s purported policy change, citing an internal memo the blog had acquired. The memo, the blog surmised, gave reservation agents the flexibility to accommodate customers who no longer wanted to fly into the South Florida airport.
The memo’s language, according to portions published online by the blog, advised that if a customer “did not want to fly to the airport” anymore, agents could use their “empowerment to offer acceptable alternatives,” such as Fort Lauderdale Airport or Miami International Airport. The memo, per the blog, then instructed agents to process the change as an even exchange.
However, in a statement to the Tribune on Friday afternoon, United said the “message was poorly worded and not accurate.” Live and Let’s Fly did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Chicago-based airline amended its statement, saying that “United customers are able to make changes to a ticket without a fee for many reasons,” but that destination name alone is not among them.
The West Palm name change took effect just over a week ago. The Trump family regularly uses the airport when they visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in nearby Palm Beach. A stretch of road from the airport to Trump’s estate was renamed Donald J. Trump Boulevard earlier this year.
“Trump Force One,” a Boeing owned by the Trump Organization, was the first plane to arrive at the airport under its new name. The president’s son Eric Trump was on board.
“There is no person who has done more for Florida and our country, and no one more deserving of this incredible honor,” Eric Trump posted on X. “As a son, and someone who flies out of this airport nearly every day, I will forever be proud to see the initials ‘DJT’ on my boarding pass.”
While new signage is already going up, the three-letter airport code will change from PBI to DJT on Aug. 18.
“However,” United stated, “our policy doesn’t allow for changes because of an airport’s name or three-letter code.”
Well, always read the fine print.
The Associated Press contributed.