It always makes me laugh when someone in a soap says that they are going to live abroad and when someone asks when they are leaving, they say it`s that night (and they didn`t think to mention it before). Yes you can get refunds on flights if you travel with a scheduled airline and you don`t buy a bog-standard economy ticket. If you travel Business class or First class the tickets are fully flexible and you can chose not to travel (no-show) and travel at a different time or cancel altogether. If you buy a full fare economy ticket (which nobody ever does because most people buy in advance and full fare economy prices tend to be last minute tickets and can be almost as expensive as Business) then I believe they are flexible as well. I`m not 100% sure on that but Business and First are definately refundable/changeable.