U.S. fines airlines more than $7M for not providing refunds
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
They have the cheapest fares, but they do that by upselling everything and any mistake will be expensive. If that's worth it to you (and sometimes the cost difference is big enough for it to be worth it imo) then it can be a reasonable tradeoff.
Flying an extreme lost cost airline that's entire existence is predicated on this model and expecting them to act contrary to that is confusing to me.
Makes for a more efficient economy that benefits everyone, even the producers in the long run.
E.g. [1]. I had no idea the pricing of carry-ons for Frontier changed depending on when/where you add it. It also makes it hard to compare prices across airlines, because I have to remember which charge for luggage and how much, so I can add it to the cost when I use flight finders.
Sometimes the changes are also something I wouldn't think about. E.g. I flew Southwest recently and had no idea that "open seating" was even a thing to check for.
I can see how people who don't fly regularly get confused. I fly a couple times a year and get surprised, I can't imagine the bewilderment of someone who flies once every 5 or 10 years.
If you want to pick your seat, pay for it.
Ancillary revenue like seat assignment fees makes it so that more people can afford to see their loved ones.
There is a very good reason people fly Spirit/Frontier/Allegiant/Sun Country.
Ya its called a ticket, which are typically received in exchange for money. Should airlines also charge a disembarking fee? pay up or don't get off the plane? Seems like that's more money left on the table, captive audience and all.
Disregarding the kidnapping part of your straw man: we also do already charge for priority disembark. This is why premium seating is typically near the boarding door.
The service I'm paying for includes an assigned seat, just like my ticket to the movies does. Its not justifiable for an airline - A federally regulated industry, not some mom and pop local business - to intentionally degrade the quality of their product to nickle and dime their customers.
Lets expand your premise a little: Should toll roads charge families extra tolls if they are in the same car together? There's revenue there - a family is certainly getting more use out of the "privledge" of traveling together than two strangers, or one person. Should NFL stadiums, movie theaters, concerts charge extra for booking seats that are adjacent? Revenue and 'Value' there as well. How about hotels? Trying to book 3 rooms for a company-conference visit, it'll be $100 for the first room, $250 for the second, and $500 for the 3rd.
Regulations are primarily there for safety concerns, not you complaining about what is honestly a non-issue. If you don't want to pay for premium seats just don't pay for them??
But on that note, airline deregulation in the US has been the best thing that has ever happened to air travel. It is now far, far more accessible to travel by air. The revealed customer preference is that very few, if any, people want to go back to being forced to pay the old fares, even if the seats were bigger and the service was better.
> The service I'm paying for includes an assigned seat, just like my ticket to the movies does
Frontier is pretty upfront about this. You certainly have absolutely no guarantee of sitting next to somebody without paying for it one way or another. You get a seat. You don't get to choose your seat. Some theatres also do charge extra for choosing seats, and the ones that don't market themselves as premium theatres.
> some varying strawmen
I certainly don't think any of these techniques should be regulated. I can certainly see a surcharge if you require adjoining rooms in a hotel.
Regulations are also there to curtail monopolistic or "anti-competitive" behavior. What is nickel and diming people who don't have an alternative anything but abusing a monopolistic position? In a healthily competitive market[0] this could be adequately adjusted for.
> some varying strawmen
Politely refrain from cursory and trite dismissals - I have engaged with your points in good faith but you do not seem to be doing me the same courtesy. Why is it you consider these to be either unrealistic or patently unacceptable but airlines splitting up families is neither?
[0]E.g. movie theaters have majorly moved over the last decade or so to assigned seating, because this provides a better experience -- a competitive advantage and because trying to rent seek via price discrimination would see them lose customers.
Think of it like buying lawn seating at a concert. Best spot is taken? Tough luck.
If they can sell aisle and window seats at a premium, you can't allow people to group for free without putting people in relatively more premium seats for free.
The scale of airline seats (on a single flight) and concert tickets is incredibly different anyway, and different forms of price discrimination are required.
By the time you're calling non-middle seats "premium", we've already lost. We should aim to have markets that provide abundance rather than focusing on extraction through things like price discrimination.
It's indefensible that they sell seats which then aren't actually big enough to fit a person, whether it be their legs or their arms - this is essentially the entire setup of "middle seats".
If they wanted to charge linearly based on dimensions, I'd understand that. But the general pattern with price discrimination is that they charge outsized amounts for slightly more use, because they know they have you over a barrel. See also: dinosaur ISP data caps.
I've often flown in seats where I had to spread my legs (eg into the aisle) so my knees were not pressed up against the seat in front of me. And on most flights, my shoulders are over the armrests. Talking about "the" armrest nicely demonstrates how much we've been saturated by their nonsense.
As I said, I'd have no problem if airlines charged as a linear combination of your weight and the dimensions of your seat. But rather the setup is to gouge an outsized price for a comparatively small amount of additional room, because they'll catch people at the margins over a barrel.
There are many reasons you might want to split up your group at a GA event, like say some people wanting to push up to the front. Or in your seat example, if your group values being closer rather than being together in further back seats. But that's your own choice and not a result of the venue forcing you.
Basically everyone flying coach on a commercial aircraft has a deliberately worse experience than if they paid for business class. The alternative is to have a single level of coach service only (which is fairly common on regional jets) or a single level of business class only service (which is rare--BA LCY to JFK as far as I know although I'm not sure that even exists any longer).
I don't know how you managed, but on my next flight with families who dodge valid charges, I will raise my plastic cup to you good sir.
Flown Frontier many dozens of times, since I usually travel alone with just a backpack. It’s probably saved me $5-10k in my adult life. Very often it will be $150+ less than the next cheapest option.
Airline seats are also assigned based on weight distribution. It's not just malice and greed.
So you’re best to pay for seats if you want to be together. However, if you pay for seats and they change your flight on you, those seats are ‘lost and you need to call for a refund.
Hell, do a credit card chargeback.
The voucher apparently expires so we had to use it or lose it.
Also, the voucher was only good for the ticketed passengers it affected, so we could not use it for one of our daughters, for example.
Also, when we did try to use it we were told it was not valid for many of the seats/tickets we were trying to book. Where it was valid: upgraded (business class or first class) flights, flights with several layovers....
Such bullshit.
In my experience (at 800k lifetime miles at this point), the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you're not happy with something, call to complain.
Vowing to never use their business again (so my loss is limited to a one-time event) and recommending everyone to do the same has worked out pretty well for me --- I can make peace with the experience and we slowly weed out these bad apples from the world
They have already determined that they don't care if you fly with them or not, so why not make sure they don't get paid for experience? It is only fair.
This infuriates me. Last week I was stuck in line for TSA for an hour and a half at Sea-Tac. The TSA clowns had one guy looking at the X-rays of luggage at the speed of molasses. Am I to believe that the TSA, FAA and airlines can't coordinate to determine when gluts of incoming passengers are expected? Bullshit. Why didn't they have more TSA workers on shift? Because they don't give a shit, nothing in the structure of the system gives the TSA an incentive to give a shit and do their job well. What do they care if people miss their flights? They don't, those smug pieces of shit don't care at all.
They even have signs plastered all over their checkpoint threatening you with federal charges and huge fines if you "verbally abuse" the TSA workers. In this country it is legal for me to call a traffic cop a fascist pig, but I can't say the same to a TSA agent? I hate them so much.
They have the same problem as BMVs, they have literally no incentive to improve. There is no competition.
You can see a different sort of example in teaching: teachers put up with terrible pay for a long time, but now they're quitting in droves because of terrible work conditions and lack of emotional fulfillment.
You have to change the nature of the job from something designed around theater and blustering to something actually useful. The pay is never the problem, it's that the jobs are bullshit. Although once the jobs are no longer bullshit, we should probably pay them better.
It's probably unconstitutional, but no one has tested it in court yet as far as I'm aware.
It used to be that you'd go through a metal detector and be done with it, and that's still the way it is in, for example, Greece. My local airport (second largest in the country, but still no SFO) gets you from the entrance to the gate in less than ten minutes.
I don't know why we've accepted this bullshit. It's not as if some malicious actor couldn't just hit a train or bus instead and kill just as many people, yet we accept all this hassle and invasion of privacy for exactly zero benefit.
No but the people putting the suitcase - that you had to take apart yourself - through the scanner will steal things from you - my credit card and powerbank went missing during the process this summer.
Probably yes. But for their fun, not yours.
You're not going to see many politicians vote against such systems because the second some incident occurs, their stance against protectionism will be crucified by opponents and gobbled up by the general public. This is one reason why the US defense budget continues to balloon. Anyone who pushes to reduce spending can easily be painted to the masses as someone who doesn't care about or want to secure your safety. This dynamic also plays into use of fear for power, so those in power drum up fears and explode risk in their own interest.
... like masks.
But seriously, a lot of the same people that objected to the TSA madness also objected to the mask mandates.
But this time a lot of people who didn't object to the TSA objected to masks.
I’m not surprised more people actually objected to the latter.
It reminds me of Norway's response to the Utoya massacre. IIRC in a speech at the time the gov said they weren't going to change their system because of one terrorist. (I might be remembering wrong but that's what stuck with me.) The US on the other hand took the opportunity to ram through as many "security" provisions through as possible which are with us to this day and can no longer be questioned as to whether they are indeed necessary or helpful.
This is something, I will do it!
Fill in useless mask mandates or shoe removal as you see fit.
Are there any good estimates of the total economic costs of this security theatre?
> The source did not give an exact number, but said the failure rate was close to 80 percent. Members of Congress called the results "disturbing" in a public hearing following a private, classified briefing to the House Committee on Homeland Security.
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-11-0...
archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20221116171835/https://www.usnew... https://archive.ph/hzA1y
Locking the airplane cockpit door, along with awareness that hijackers will kill you (as opposed to fly you to a different country and you are free in a couple days if you stay quiet) are also factors. I don't know how to separate them from anything the TSA does, but I have to believe those are both more important.
A change which contributed to the complete loss of an aircraft and all aboard when the pilot left to go to the toilet and the copilot locked the door to crash it into a mountainside. The law of unintended consequences in full effect. Had such a change not been enacted that flight likely would have survived.
It's somewhat better than a UBI
A UBI is going to normalize condition and make “them” see there’s even more to participate in.
Sounds like you still prefer maintenance of a steerage class, assuming you’ll be a bit higher on the totem pole. But I mean, real talk is you’re still just one of billions. How you feel the world as-is is a meaningless measure for how you would fit into a UBI world. And I have no particular obligation to your sensibilities. shrug emoji You’re a “them” to me is not an unreasonable statement.
Also I have no idea what "normalize condition" means?
The problem is not that they are ineffective but that people followed them poorly. I've seen countless people wearing them super ineffectively like leaving their nose completely out, and many people when they wear surgical masks they don't bend the metal bar to fit to their nose and instead basically have like a canopy instead of a mask which of course doesn't do much.
That's not true. There are good studies, followed up with full contact tracing in the environment it happened in, that show aerosol transmission in everyday situations (such as planes and restaurants)
Additionally on the poor fitting masks, triple layer surgicals are more effective (not effective enough) when double masking (which that situation is surgical first, cloth second.. this is the same as using a mask brace to ensure a tight fit)
However, the findings from Aaron Collins found that yes, they are better with a mask fitter.. but they still fail to qualify at the same level as an N95, KN95, or KF94 level of protection. (Those are the levels of protection you require when dealing with airborne based contaminants) On top of that it made it more difficult to wear.
Do they reduce COVID 19 transmision is basically the same question as does a book stop a bullet. Yes. Is if sufficient? No. (Safe vs Safe-er)
With aerosols, it's a lot out there, they're light, move from low pressure to high, and they float. (You need better protection, and you have to ensure that the filter does it's job, surgical don't and can't do that.. although the CDC tried to hack their way through that with "fit adjustments")
With droplet, it requires those being projected, more affected by gravity, and it requires an entry point into entering you. (They're heavilier particles, and typically this is less likely to spread)
All of the masking in the US is regulated by OSHA for the work world. (And is only for the working world.. no N95s for children) That's why N95s are required in hospitals (with workers, and only for workers are N95s required to be fit tested) in this case. Unfortuantely with a lot of the papers you see .. they tend to minimize what other country's population standards. I think they (KF94s, FFP2s, KN95 [if you have a trust worthy regulation body] etc) would be a better fit for the general population.
Same with the Customs and Immigration Services (the passport checkers) at SFO. I have seen lines going out to the walkway (leading into the big room). I can't even imagine traveling with a couple of little children; there's no restroom in that big hall.
By law, these people get full passenger manifests, arrival times, etc. before the flight even lands. They know, down to the passenger, everyone's status, nationality, etc.
AND STILL THEY ARE OFTEN SHORTHANDED!
This is the reception we give to visitors to the country. SMH...
GP's desire to berate TSA agents, for example, suggests that job-satisfaction might not be real high.
https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/safety-secur...
Airlines, TSA, and airport messaging constantly remind me to be hours early and to anticipate long security lines.
I will go out of my way to not fly, since I've found flying (more specifically, the logistics _around_ flying) to be a displeasurable experience, and driving is much easier and affordable.
I like to remind people, especially kids that don't know different, that the TSA was imposed on us and air travel used to be so much better.
You will have to define effective to tell if TSA or private security is better. TSA is an effective hinderance on travel, jobs program, and public money funnel for scanner companies. Private security was more effective at scaling security for the risk and trying to be a minimal hinderance to travelers.
Last thing I need is a TSA equivalent pat down for entering a bus or metro because the government decided it wants to.
Likewise, if there is only 2 people on duty to search bags identified that need searching, and they're busy, then any liquids etc. in other bags will be 'not noticed' so as to not overload the people searching bags and cause queues.
Such things make me always deliberately choose small airports - they're just so efficient compared to airports where security theater is done 'properly'.
I wish this was true.
In Spain recently something in my bag tripped the Xray alarm. I had to unpack my bag and take "something metal" out for inspection. It turned out it was an empty food packaging with a shiny foil bit on the side. Over all, it's not so big a deal, but they certainly cared about it.
If the line can sometimes take 5 minutes and sometimes take 2 hours, you need to arrive 2 hours early. And then if it actually takes just 5 minutes - that’s 1:55 left for buying food and shopping.
However, what happens is that they put a fine and later they spend the money however they decide. It is funny. :)
- Iceland Air and Easyjet issued refunds quickly
- Brussels took a few months, but communicated proactively that they were working on it and provided updates without me reaching out
- TAP never picked up the phone and I ended up having to force a charge after every other airline had come through with a refund...
Not surprised, lol
Same happened to me. And I even called an additional time and only dealt with them in Portuguese hoping I might get somewhere with that tactic. Nope. Called, emailed, tweeted, you name it. No luck.
Ryanair was pretty bad too. I spent a few weeks trying to book a short, direct flight between major cities and they kept cancelling the flights (3-4 in a row) and trying to give me credit. Their webchat helpline was quite poor, too.
I also had a buttload of flights planned for March/April 2020 and EasyJet was by far the easiest. I got a Trenitalia refund probably 18 months later and I had to PayPal-chargeback some OTA which eventually emailed me asking to reverse the chargeback. Sure. The OTA capitulated soon after.
Don't have to fight the airline for compensation for a flight that was cancelled if the airline doesn't have your money yet.
This sounds insane until you realize that this is essentially how hotels work. You pay a deposit, and the rest isn't owed until you are physically in the hotel.
Or everything else. Trains, taxis, restaurants, everything.
How many institutions do you know where you can't buy a ticket at the door, and instead have to prepay?
Yes, there are a few services you post-pay like restaurants and taxis but you probably don't want to make a practice of running out on your bill.
Rental cars are something of an outlier in that, in the US, you can mostly book with major brands and just not show up with no penalty.
Sure they do. Maybe not literally at the door because you have to go through security first. But they'll sell you one at the ticket counter if there are seats available.
Right, that's what the deposit is for, and that's how airlines would presumably do that.
4 months and still waiting for my Lufthansa refund (4000 eur) and no sign of compensation...
They ignore till you take it to the court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_deregulation#Post-dere...
It's been a constant trend towards a. cheaper flights b. worse quality flights.
I once cancelled a flight on United, but the $400 "credit" I had (1y expiry) with them had some special "booking code" attached to it (not informed of this on purchase, bought regularly through their website) so the only tickets I was allowed to use the credit on cost > $1000 (regular economy class..) due to this booking code and had to be searched through a special portal.. what the hell? I could use the regular front page flight search and buy same seat on same flight for less than the difference using my credit..
Does anyone have a positive experience with an airline? They're all such trash.
My only one is with Porter airlines, flying out of Toronto. It's often delayed but they're incredibly kind and sometimes give me a $15 voucher to the bar! Also a free alcoholic drink on board.
United took care of everything I wanted through many disruptions, delays and cancellations; I got more than value back. Their agent worked through a complicated ticket reuse scenario with setting up a different number of travelers on a different itinerary, I was thrilled with that experience. Alaska gave me free Premium Economy so that I'd have a better chance to make a connecting flight after a delay, and their agents worked really hard to rebook me for a long international itinerary (including on non-partner airlines) to try to make up my time after another delay (and I didn't need one but they also made sure everyone got hotel vouchers and handheld people through using it for accommodations for those who needed it). Both standout positive experiences. I'm continually impressed by flight attendants as a class, and I've never seen one lose their cool even with bizarre, ignorant, or frustrating passengers. Onboard device stuff works pretty well these days, free messaging and streaming a bunch of media from the onboard server for free is nice! Wi-fi is pretty cheap (half of what hotels which charge for Wi-fi cost).
Flying now is cheaper and more accessible than ever. If you're nostalgic about the golden days of aviation you can still get white-glove service, free cocktails and real silverware if you pay those golden-era prices. If you want to save as much money as possible, you can sit a middle seat without baggage and fly across Europe for $35. I will say that once upon a time you could find "dream fares" on unsold inventory, and those kind of rare deep discounts don't seem to exist, I assume because there are better pricing algorithms for filling flights.
Some of it's knowledge and expectations: I've learned more over the years about things like fare classes. There is a cancellation policy and you agree to it when you buy your fare. It's not like it's a secret. These days you'll almost always see that there's a flexible fare class which gives you more options for cancellation; and some, where you can save money with a nonrefundable fare. I have learned more about the ins and outs are here, over time, so I can certainly understand that if you didn't know these things in advance you'll feel shafted. I've never felt that way but I certainly get it. I guess I just see it more as something to learn rather than something bad someone did to me. I know more about how to spend money on the things I care about and save money on the things I don't.
It expires in a couple weeks from today and I just assume I'm never going to use it. I'm also always going to avoid JetBlue in the future. They don't even advertise prices that include carry on bags anymore, you have to pay extra to bring a change of clothes with you.
How does one actually enforce their verbal promise of reimbursement. Is there a government agency where people file their complaints?
I had an airline change my ticket from refundable/changeable to non-refundable/non-changeable. The airline refused to acknowledge our original contract. A complaint to the DOT got their attention quickly and I was refunded quickly.
https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/complaint-process
After the 12 month period, I spent 2 months calling, email-escalating, and eventually filing a DOT complaint. Aeromexico responded within 2 days of the DOT complaint being received and theoretically is in the process of actually refunding me this time (knock on wood).
$7m is nothing for them. The fines need to be bigger, quicker, and more aggressive to stop this behavior. They are screwing customers because they can get away with it. EU regulations around customer refunds are significantly better than in the US, and we should be heading in that direction to hold these companies accountable.
Side note: my sister actually had tickets on the same route but for an itinerary the week before me and got the refund with no issues, so I have no clue why I had to do the DOT song and dance.
> The department’s intervention contributed to the airlines’ issuing more than $600 million in refunds, it said.
> ...
> [United States Secretary of Transportation] Mr. Buttigieg said that, while the department was more focused on ensuring that refunds were paid than on collecting fines, he had nonetheless asked staff to look into whether the penalties were sufficient to prevent such behavior in the future.
> “This really shouldn’t be happening in the first place,” he said. “And we’ll continue ratcheting up the penalty side until we’re seeing less of this kind of behavior to begin with.”
Dan has more detail and isn’t paywalled: https://www.dansdeals.com/more/news/airline-news/dot-issues-...
> Frontier said it had issued about $100 million in what it described as “good-will refunds” that were not legally required. The airline will pay only $1 million of the $2.2 million fine because the Transportation Department credited it for providing refunds to passengers who canceled nonrefundable tickets early in the pandemic.
But, either way, the DOT's main focus is on getting people the refunds. I added a bit more context to my first message to clarify that, but also the fact that the fine is ~1% of the owed refunds makes it fairly clear IMO.
I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten a "one time refund" from the same companies over and over. From the perspective of a business any refund issued is done in good will. Otherwise it isn't a refund.
Airline has 36 hours to process a refund or direct payment or US fines the airline $7M each DAY there is at least 1 customer that has not received a refund.
I ended up having to purchase a new last minute flight from another airline. I was supposed to get a refund for the cancelled flight, but I’m not sure I ever did.
I think the general consensus for your average citizen and consumer these days is that they are voiceless and powerless in most these situations while lots of posturing and theatrics go on between government and businesses, all while fleecing your average citizen and consumer.
Most see a lot more erosion than we see realized improvements in daily life from rights, regulatory action, or market trends/shifts.
I think they sometimes avoid this problem by only putting restrictions on commercial entities, not on political or charitable entities:
>In Michigan, commercial vendors are not permitted to robocall individuals without prior consent, but political campaigns and charitable organizations are exempt from any such restrictions.[1]
There does seem to be some bipartisan support for fighting spam calls.[2]
[1] https://www.michiganelectionlaw.com/political-spam-text-emai...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/31/traced-act-signed-into-law...
I don't know what the reality is, but I can imagine a justification that looks something like, "We do this slap on the wrist. You fix this or next time we have a paper trail showing you know this is illegal conduct"
And it is. Because the message is loud and clear: don’t make us pay attention to you and fix your shit.
I think it's less that people see a slap on the wrist, and more that people see the systemic, wholesale capture and gutting of regulatory bodies and are not surprised that nothing substantive happens in this kind of case.
And then to be gaslit into thinking "don't trust your eyes", you can see why some people are pretty angry nowadays.
I propose the following: when fines like this are levied against an airline, the airline has to pay out the full $7M figure to one individual who was wronged, and that person is chosen via lottery.
Few days later I hit them up for a refund on the canceled flight. They're happy to refund the NY to SD leg... to a tune of $24. Turns out their internal valuation of a $600 flight is $576 for the first 8h, then $24 for the last 6h. Lol. JetBlue man.
* https://www.caa.co.uk/passengers/resolving-travel-problems/d...
* https://www.caa.co.uk/passengers/resolving-travel-problems/d...
It sounds a bit confusing as to whether you were cancelled or delayed, or accepted an offer etc. but I wouldn't accept $24...
For future reference, Airhelp will fight it for you [1].
I'll let their Berlin-based team know :).
My credit card comes with insurance for this, but I've been going back and forth with Visa's process for this since July and still haven't gotten reimbursed.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
As an aside, originally written as a response to a now-deleted comment about noise regulations that shouldn't excuse your compensation situation at all:
> The airport in San Diego is abnormally close to the downtown area more than virtually any other major airport in the US or Europe, barring dedicated urban airports like London City. To paint a picture, while landing there it feels like you're flying between skyscrapers, and that's probably actually the case. If there's any commercial airport that should have noise/time regulations, SAN is probably up there on the list.
I have. Even after 3 hours on the phone. For a flight booked months in advance, and canceled 20 hours before departing. They kept finding flights, and then saying they needed to get them approved by their supervisor, which was rejected 3 times. I assume they decided that the lost tickets would be too expensive and would rather just screw me.
I had to file a chargeback with my credit card to even get a refund (after 2 months), and I'm currently using a legal service which is in the process of suing American Airlines to get the statutory standard compensation for canceled flights in the EU. They simply ignored my (and the legal service's) requests for such.
And nah, the noise regulation was never suggested to be a reason for bad compensation. As a foreigner I've never seen people flip their shit so much in public - like the plane staff (attendants, pilot etc) clearly had no part in the flight getting canceled, and were so apologetic - but people were yelling, swearing at them, it was pure fucking anarchy.
At that point I had been up 27h, I just walked away, bought my morning flight. Found a hotel that was open (it was past midnight), took a cooked 2h subway ride into NY, slept for 4h, took 2h subway back, got my flight, presented. Honestly my biggest regret in the whole experience was just not choosing to sleep at the airport on the ground. Lol.