Expert: Roberto Gomes - 10/19/2006

Question
I am flying to Romania to meet my fiancee and hope to bring her back with me to the US on a fiancee visa. She will have an interview with the US embassy there, which may or may not issue her the visa--we won't know until the interview. I would very much like to have her on the same (return) flights I am on (adjacent seats if possible!). I am assuming that would be very difficult to make happen if we waited until the embassy gave her the visa, since she would fly to the US within the week. If I were to buy the tickets for her ahead of time, though, and she was refused permission to come to the US with me, would I lose the $ I spent for her ticket? Is there some sort of ticket insurance that I could buy that would apply to this? Or do you have additional suggestions/options?

Thanks for your help!

Answer
Dear Dave,

First of all, my congratulations.

The sooner you buy her tickets more chance you will have to get a better fare. But behind this deal, there are normally a lot of restrictions and in order to be familiar with this you will need to know the fare rules involved.

Also since there are no direct flights from Romania to the US, a connection in an European city is required and with this an airline change.

So you will need to pay attention to the fare rule. There are refundable and non-refundable fares. And in most cases, a penalty service charge is applied to a refundable fare.

Hope this helps. If you need any additional information, please let me know.

Best Regards,
R. Gomes

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