Booking a flight for study abroad is the last step in a long journey of paperwork, meetings, emails and nail-biting wait times to get your acceptance. It’s a happy step, but it can also be riddled with anxiety if a simple detail is not worked out: your return date.

A program’s return date often depends on your host university abroad. If they haven’t finalized their calendar, the dreaded “TBD” will be all you see in your itinerary. Plus, there’s the chance that you’ll want to extend your trip or have to return early.

At the end of my year-long program in the Netherlands, I got a Eurail pass and backpacked for three weeks in western Europe. It was awesome. I met several other students who were traveling at the same time and others who were traveling for months!

Jaymie Baliwag

UC Merced

So, how can you book a round-trip ticket and still plan for the unknown?

 

1. Focus on Known Travel Dates

Find your official start date for the program and term in MyEAP.  Depending on how far you are traveling, you may want to arrive a day or two (or longer) before the official start date to recover from jet lag and give yourself a little time to explore. If the exact program end date is unavailable and you need to purchase your tickets, check the estimated dates in the program overview. Once you have your start date and your best guess at a return date, you’re ready to buy airfare.

 

2. Choose a Changeable Flight Ticket

The best type of airline ticket for study abroad is one that can be changed (sometimes called flexible, unrestricted, or refundable depending on the airline). Here’s why:

1. You may not have the program end date in time to buy your ticket.
2. You may pursue personal travel after your program.
3. You may extend your study abroad—even to a different location!

Even if you’re not sure, it’s better to have a changeable ticket. Without a changeable ticket, you may end up paying up to $450 plus the cost difference between the old and new tickets. Changeable fares are a little more expensive up front, but cheaper in the long-run if you end up changing your flight dates (highly likely). Be sure to read the fine print because each carrier’s terminology is a little different and some are very good at hiding change fees or limiting the time period you have to rebook your flight.

The good news is that extra cost of a changeable ticket is accounted for in your program budget, so if you are on financial aid it will be packaged to cover the expense.

 

3. Change Your Dates As Needed

It’s normal for students to change their flight dates more than once (often 3-4 times!). While you do have to select a return date when you buy a full fare ticket, you can just change it when your plans change—very handy when, for example, you’re trying to get home from Australia but wanting to add a stopover in Thailand.