How would an airline capacity plan with just a reservation? Seems like a backwards approach to just mandating the airline pay you back if they fail to provide service
In Germany, airlines have a strong incentive to refuse any refund. Courts are very slow to render decisions and the worst that can happen is being ordered to refund the original amount. Behaviour-correcting damages do not exist under German law. In combination this deters some passengers from pursuing their claim.
Edit: Airlines would also be ordered to pay court and lawyer fees which could be construed incentivising. Yet both fees are statutory capped and quite low for the average ticket price.
Maybe if they want to change the laws anyway, this is what they should fix instead. In particular, there should be punitive damages for everything illegal that are high enough that it's almost never profitable to break the law even if you get away with it a significant proportion of the time.
Adding some obscure consumer protection rule is a much less controversial change to the law.
The traditional German legal doctrine sees the enforcement of fair business practices rather in the hands of the authorities than in those of consumers. Of course, there is little evidence of this to work in this or similar contexts.
There ARE punitive damages the airline has to pay you if they cancel or delay your flight. It's EU law. See the sibling comment.
For instance if they cancel or delay a flight over 1500 km in the EU you're entitled to 400 Euro compensation on top of cost of ticket and other expenses you had due to it.
Does that include payment for time spent seeking a verdict?
And do you have evidence that the US style works? Or was that just a throwaway "of course the state doesn't work!" comment without justification?
That just isn't true. The airlines often pretend that isn't the case, but just linking to, e.g., the site below usually make them pay without too much hassle.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
So while you can have opinions about the exact conditions, you can’t argue there are none.
You can pay a company to do it for you, and onboarding with them takes longer than a half hour.
A quick e-mail to the airline with the order number, stating the expected flight plan, and comparing it with the actual flight plan and a calculated delay have always worked, even with the cheaper airlines.
I would use them only after trying to do it yourself.
My daughter was trying to come home from university this summer and they canceled her flight twice while she was in line at security. Guess what Wizzair said.
She has claims opened with Airhelp now, we'll see what happens.
The whole thing came up because airlines don't pay back customers in a timely manner. It can takes months to get your money back from airlines even when the airline is fully at fault.
It can be quite confusing at times. For example, both Iceland and Norway are part of the Schengen agreement[3], so in that respect we're "from EU" when traveling.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Associatio...
Its incredibly useful for visa reasons though.
> “Everyone must be aware that at the time of booking you are entering into a contract of carriage that is subject to certain conditions, such as no-show and/or rebooking fees.”
Responsibly perhaps?
So they make the most effort to make sure the service is delivered since it will only be paid if they can deliver? I know it is a novelty idea paying for only the received service when received, something never been used throughout the history before as one always had to pay well in advance and then may or may not receive the service paid for, but perhaps we could get used to this very novel and revolutionary idea, no? : )
I believe this paying for something not delivered yet and run circles getting back if not delivered at all on the agreed terms is in the benefit of the airlines. Being abused many many times. Otherwise we wouldn't have needed extensive and stict regulations about compensations. This may change. There is a desire for it from customers.
This kind of pay-on-the-spot only works when there's tons of capacity, if you don't take this one, you'll get the next, no problem, and where the provider doesn't need 100% usage, i.e. where costs are incremental rather than fixed.
And airplane fails that criteria in both ways. This plan is bad for both airline and customer.
The big changes are in two unusual cases: ① The airline closes before you fly, such as Swissair, Air Berlin etc. In that case you don't pay. ② The airline cancels your reservation, as many did during the early covid phase. In that case you and the airline quarrel about nonperformance of the contract, just as you do now, but you have the money during the quarrel instead of the airline offering you a voucher.
I don’t care about the financial success of airlines but I sure as fuck don’t want jet fuel burned pushing around empty seats.
If you want to save fuel fly 5% slower and save 10% fuel.
Either way, what about the unintended consequences for travellers if a slow down was mandated permanently?
You would need at least 15% more planes, pilots, ground personnel, etc... to handle the reduced bandwidth. For non-direct flights, fewer connections could be made likely increasing the airport population its ancillary services.
Airlines already do this from time to time usually when fuel costs outpaces pricing power:
https://www.reuters.com/article/airlines-fuelcells-kemp/refi...
Its also possible to fly 20% (36kft vs 30k) higher where drag for the same speed will be lower. Drag varies linearly with density.
An aircraft purposely designed for low fuel consumption could save 50% or more jet fuel without being significantly slower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_D8
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/future_airp...