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Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

I believe the analysis. Here in Canada, the government passed a law not that long ago (during the pandemic) to enshrine rights of passengers for delayed and cancelled flights, which included right to specific amounts of monetary compensation in those scenarios. The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. Lo and behold, the airlines have started classifying almost every delay and cancellation as a safety issue [1] and denying compensation claims left and right.

[1] Here is an example of how ridiculously far the airlines have gone in claiming everything is a safety issue, even when it is things completely within their power to control: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/air-canada-denies-compensatio...

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The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue.

This makes no sense at all. If I order a pizza and it doesn't show up the reason it doesn't show up is completely irrelevant; they still owe me my money back.

I think the reasoning would be to disincentivize airlines from potentially flying a plane that is unsafe to avoid paying out.

Then have a panel from canada's regulatory body review every case and fine those who misclassify their cancellation, then have an independent audit of those panels to avoid regulatory capture.

All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.

The idea of having multiple layers is to make foul play more difficult to cover up; i.e the chances of someone screwing up grows exponentially with every person you add.

That assumes that every person you add has the ability to understand all the details plus is actually willing to do their best to find any remaining issues. Somehow this doesn't match up with my real world experience. It also assumes that convoluted rules will hinder larger companies from exploiting the rules, which is actually the other way around: The larger they are, the better they get at finding loopholes and using them for their own gains. Plus you make it increasingly more difficult to see where your regulatory body has been compromised.

Humans don't work like tech, so adding more and more layers doesn't help really, and I haven't found any organizational form which can inherently prevent humans from being human, it just doesn't exist. For example, all the "paperwork" around safety only works if humans are actually interested in maximizing safety and not just filling out papers.

That's labor intensive. You could always set a threshold.. where if more than X% of your flights are canceled due to safety issues in any month, your maintenance operation gets fully audited.

No, I would remove the exception and put up even heftier fines (i.e. costs more than the (partial) refunding) for safety violations. There should be structures and procedures for that in place already and you avoid creating even more bureacraziness with all the problems that brings.

Good point. disincentivize Lax maintenance even more, airlines should want their planes to be in good condition

That just incentivizes better lying, not better safety. These rules have been written in blood many times over.

You mean better lying than they already do by reclassifying everything as a "safety issue" to avoid paying out customers because they skipped on a lot of things already to increase "shareholder value" or other such garbage?

I just hope they don't drain additional time & people to check into each of these "safety issues" now, thinning out the crowd who will also check into actual incidents ...

Who is on the regulatory body that reviews these cases? Probably friends of the airline industry.

> flying a plane that is unsafe

which is already illegal, and has consequences. The airline will probably lose reputation and business if the public catches wind of it. The exception for cancellation should not have been in place, except as a way for airlines to get out of the obligations but also allow law makers to be seen to be doing something. Basically theater.

If they suddenly have way more safety issues, the logical next step would be to prevent them from operating an airline, right?

All this says to me is that the government does nothing to prevent hugely unsafe airlines from operating.

The cancellation loophole seems fine to me, it's the followthrough that's concerning. What am I missing here?

> If they suddenly have way more safety issues, the logical next step would be to prevent them from operating an airline, right?

Thing is, you, as an external observer, can't tell.

There are a zillion things that slightly increase risk. If a manager ignores a couple to avoid having a black mark due to costing the company money its very unlikely to bite him in any way that can be pinned on him. But the combination of a very large number of these little decisions will eventually result in a crash.

And before you ask, no, saying "well you just tell everyone they must take no risks at all or its prison time" is not the answer as that will basically kill the airlines as a form of mass transit, leading to everyone taking the more dangerous car trips. There's always something more that can be done to reduce risk.

Or reduce passenger travelling, which in the current days of possible zoom meetings and climate disruption would be a net positive.

The safety issues have nothing to do with the planes. They are to do with lack of crew to fly the planes. The airlines are not maintaining a sufficient reserve of backup crews because doing so costs money. The is profiteering under the guises of "safety".

They want to avoid the following situation. X% of the time a plane crashes and costs $Y. It costs $Z to cancel/delay a flight due to penalties and compensation. $Z > X% of $Y, therefore fly the unsafe flight. So they lower $Y in the case that it's a safety issue to save lives.

Who are "they"and why would "they" want to do that?

Asking because flying passengers on unsafe planes is already illegal.

They are the Canadian government and they want to do that because keeping their citizens alive is part of their job.

Not as much of their job as it used to be unfortunately. But that is a topic for another day.

Presumably someone who flies on planes, because they don't want the plane they're on to crash.

Wouldn't the genuine answer to that be to increase the cost of a plane crashing by a lot?

The genuine answer is to held criminally liable the responsibles for allowing an unsafe flight to take off.

The free market at work. "Do you want me to provide plain bad service or bad service that also puts the customers' lives at risk? The choice is yours, dear regulator!"

But more seriously, I think the sibling posts are right here: A plane crash is more than a monetary risk: In the worst case, managers of the airline could be criminally liable for lost lives.

> The free market at work.

Do you have any clue how dangerous Soviet passenger aircraft and their flights were, compared to their Western counterparts?

Russia continues to have a dismal aviation safety record.

The West has largely regulated away airline crashes - the last in the US was in 2009, and it's down 95% in fatalities-per-passenger in the last two decades or so. Stuff like the 1500 hour rule certainly weren't industry initiatives.

The 1500 hour rule didn’t improve safety, and, in fact was applied as supposed remedy in response to a pilot-error caused crash in which the pilot had well more than the 1500 hours of flight time.

> The 1500 hour rule didn’t improve safety

That’s hard to assess on an individual level, especially with how rare crashes are today; confidently stating it did nothing is hard to support. On a collective level, the impact of the entire set of regulations on safety is very clear.

> was applied as supposed remedy

No. The post-Buffalo changes included some direct changes like the rules on pilot fatigue. They also included some proactive changes like the 1500 rule.

We don’t have to wait for a crash to make things safer.

Nobody does, because the Soviets didn't record data even vaguely accurately. The human origins of these behaviours are deeply woven into these cultures.

There are countless examples of this, but the most transparent I've come across is Chernobyl.

The free market at work also generated the airlines and travel industry that so many enjoy. We created the FAA and other entities to regulate the market participants to make sure we get the outcome we desire while balancing generating economic activity. If something isn’t working right, it’s the responsibility of regulators to fix the problem, or ultimately the people to elect representatives who will.

This casual cynicism regarding markets is dangerous and infectious because instead of focusing on fixing problems that have solutions via the levers of government, people give up completely and then nothing is ever made better. We need more participation in government, not less. When you toss up anything bad as “that’s the free market folks!”, people have no recourse. They can’t vote away airlines. So you end up directing action toward something that can’t be actioned upon. It’s misdirection.

Also claiming that “this is the free market” ignores the vast civilian infrastructure that is built and maintained by the State and regulatory agencies and practices that have been created. Not to mention bailouts in the past of bankrupted airlines and such. Airlines in particular are not a good example of “that’s the free market”, and even so markets don’t operate in a vacuum, they serve at the behest of the people and the government.

> This casual cynicism regarding markets is dangerous and infectious because instead of focusing on fixing problems that have solutions via the levers of government, people give up completely and then nothing is ever made better.

I don't think this follows, and I think it's because you're missing a piece of what's going on here.

You seem to be coming to this from a perspective of "obviously, a healthy system has a market with sensible regulations on it."

That's a world away from where most people (or at least, the loudest people) who criticize regulations are coming from, which is basically, "Unregulated free markets solve all problems, and government only creates problems."

If you feel like you're seeing a lot of cynicism directed at "free markets", this is likely why: it's a reaction against these extremely vocal "drown-government-in-a-bathtub" types.

Thing is, there are generally two different things that people can mean when they say "free market":

1. A "market economy", as contrasted with a "command economy"—ie, more or less the way the US does things, as opposed to the way the Soviet Union did things.

2. An "ideal free market", as described by Adam Smith, which can, in theory, ensure that many systems find a stable, efficient equilibrium that balances consumer desires with producer desires.

The problem is that, however much many (particularly of the Libertarian bent) wish to believe in it, the latter is not real. It is a thought experiment, and it requires a bunch of conditions that don't always apply (eg, perfect information, commoditization, etc). The other problem, of course, is that as I said, the two are often called "free markets" interchangeably without clarification, which leads to much confusion.

Agreed. Just a nitpick, when I think of libertarian absolutists, I don't necessarily think about Adam Smith. I haven't read "Wealth of Nations", but I believe he was much more reasonable than an Ayn Rand for example.

American style libertarian absolutists are usually not very subtle, sometimes even clownish like she was.

From what I understand, having also not read The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith had some...biases and blind spots, but was overall talking about useful ideas.

Thing is, he recognized them as theoretical. Too many of the people parroting them think they were meant to be applied directly to the real world, as if we had an actual spherical market cow in a vacuum.

> and it requires a bunch of conditions that don't always apply (eg, perfect information, commoditization, etc)

Not only this, but large parts of the current economy only function because the conditions don't apply.

E.g., we know that humans don't make perfectly rational decisions but are influenced by all kinds of biases, etc. And we have the entire advertising and marketing sector that does nothing else than exploit those biases.

Yet at the same time, whenever there is the risk of new regulation being introduced, the fantasy of the perfectly informed, fully rational consumer is pulled out of the box...

> If you feel like you're seeing a lot of cynicism directed at "free markets", this is likely why: it's a reaction against these extremely vocal "drown-government-in-a-bathtub" types.

Yea but that’s bad because it’s unsophisticated and it also creates people who start to believe that the market mechanic is a bad thing or the source of their problems, when it’s not. This creates bad ideas, cynicism because you can’t take action against this invisible market, or people lose interest in participating in government.

> The other problem, of course, is that as I said, the two are often called "free markets" interchangeably without clarification, which leads to much confusion.

That’s the fault of the author.

> The free market at work also generated the airlines and travel industry that so many enjoy.

Well, that and all the government spending on aviation in WWII.

The airline industry and its basic economic model already existed in the 1930s. All the money did was accelerate the inevitable by 20yr.

And with respect to additional compensation for delays, it's arguable that may be a good thing as a matter of policy. But people should understand that the net effect is to add a surcharge to all airline tickets to cover both expected payments and the cost of additional slack airlines may build into their systems to reduce delays.

Which may be reasonable as a matter of policy. Increase ticket prices, hopefully reduce delays, and provide compensation when delays happen anyway. That may be a reasonable tradeoff but not sure everyone would agree.

ADDED: The strongest argument is probably that, while it will increase prices somewhat, it encourages airlines to build more slack into the system at the cost of some efficiency. But that may be a net positive given that delays externalize costs, including non-monetary ones, onto all passengers--including those that are less price-sensitive.

> The free market at work also generated the airlines and travel industry that so many enjoy.

Not so sure about that. Remember, the airline industry used to be very regulated and it was an absolutely wonderful experience.

The very young might not have experienced it, but flying was really great. No extra fees for anything, everything was included. Service and food for the whole plane was better than one gets in business class today. Flights were not jam packed full all the time, there was plenty of space to stretch and always space for your luggage. Plenty of knee room even in the cheapest seats. Flying was great.

Then it got deregulated and it has been a race to the bottom ever since. Less and less amenities, less space, even less space, every little thing is an extra fee, every flight is jam packed full, seats are within inches of each other, no room for your carryon because every square inch of space has been oversold, passengers getting bumped regularly due to oversold flights. Flying is miserable and I'd rather never do it again.

I don’t know anything about Canadian travel law, but I assume there is no question that the airline must deliver the service you paid for.

It reads to me like this law was intended to provide additional compensation to passengers who are delayed. The EU has something similar.

We accidentally dropped a screw in your pizza and had to cancel it as a safety issue. Sorry, no refunds. Brilliant!

I think the response to that would be (based on the assumption that this safety clause is being routinely thrown around), "why do you keep dropping screws in so many pizzas?"

Based on our non-biased investigation, our rate of screws in pizzas isn't any higher than that of our competitors. (subtext: Financial incentive)

If you want less screws in pizzas, maybe you should petition your representatives in government [who we've paid off to ignore the issue]

In fact, we'd support any legislative action to subsidize investment into improving the rates of screws in pizzas across the industry because we care about your well-being so much [as long as there's no oversight over how those funds are actually used, papa needs a new Ford F150]

This isn't about refunds for the fare paid. This is about the ADDITIONAL $1000 compensation that airlines owe for last minute cancellation.

The above comment wasnt complete. The airline must still provide either a refund or alternate travel arrangements (regardless of if a delay is within their control or not). There is additional monetary compensation required if the flight is delayed by more than a certain number of hours (but only if it is within the airline's control)

I've made about $1400 from delayed flights in the last 3 years

> Lo and behold, the airlines have started classifying almost every delay and cancellation as a safety issue

Then the regulators should be asking why there are so many safety issues? Seems like by the airlines' own admission, this is a perfect ground for a full investigation and penalties in case the issues are found to be misclassified under the category of safety.

They only care about safety issues during flight. Flights that dont happen are not a "flight safety" issue. The safest trip is always the one that doesnt try to leave the ground.

Is it a trip if it doesn't leave the ground?

That is an odd take - so any shit can happen to the customers as long as they don't get in the air? IMHO they should also care about customers being cheated out of compensation on account of misclassification of the reason for the flights being cancelled.

Most safety issues to planes happen on the ground...just saying.

I said try to leave the ground. Planes that never leave the gate are generally rather safe.

No...that was was my point they are not.

You need to be very very very careful not to disincentivize people declaring safety issues. They should really just unwind the wrong incentive and handle it differently.

Random spot checks of declared safety incidents + serious penalties for fraud (which this is if the companies are lying about safety incidents to avoid paying out compensation) is probably sufficient without changing any regulations in any meaningful way. No regulation is perfect but it’s quite surprising how effective regulations become when you start spot checking whether everyone is being honest.

Are you describing what food agencies do with their pseudorandom inspections? Because indeed those seem to work very well at a relatively low cost.

Sure that’s one example but I think there’s various things like this. You have to make sure that investigators can also be made undercover where makes sense (if it’s possible to obfuscate malfeasance) and rotate the inspector’s physical location (to avoid potential for corruption due to personal relationships). You always still have other corruption vectors (eg getting buddy buddy with the inspector’s boss and influencing them indirectly). It’s an unsolved problem but you can always do better than nothing.

Under what basis do you have to claim those "random" inspections "work very well"

Personally I believe they do almost nothing. Food born illness is pretty common and almost impossible to trace unless it is a wide spread outbreak.

Many cities only inspect a food establishment every 2-3 years and in some cases as long as 5 years.

I think reputation, and economics play a larger factor in safety then government inspections. Dirty places making their customers ill tend to close long before the government inspectors come around.

What country are you referring to?

Given we are in a topic thread about the US State of NY, about a Law in NY State. I am referring to the US, and Specifically NY which has been famous for their health dept in come cases not inspecting places for years

Gotcha. My only experience is with Ontario. Fair to assume we were sticking to NY. :)

Ok. But a state being disfunctional in a specific way surely means we should be looking externally for places where it’s not that disfunctional to figure out how to fix the disfunction. No? Am I taking crazy pills?

Penalties need to include individuals and not just companies.

Enforcement, transparency, and accountability are critical to regulations working correctly, which is why companies lobby against them at every opportunity. If they can get a toothless regulation on the books companies and politicians can all pretend something has been done to address the problems while the people can continue to be endangered/exploited.

And regulators all the way down.. regulations seldom work without unintended consequences and people finding loopholes or blackmarkets. They do more harm than good.

They may do harm, significant harm, but it is unfair to categorically claim that the harm is greater than the good.

Personally I think aircraft safety regulations do plenty of good.

Note that the aircraft industry, although state-regulated, almost behaves as self-regulated since airlines are mostly demanding of excellent regulations and high safety standards to reassure passengers. Very different from, say, Dupont (chemicals), who is regulated for OSHA reasons, but who would always find workers even if they dived at Bophal levels of safety.

I'm inclined to agree, but I am somewhat curious about this. The Boeing 737 max crashes certainly demonstrate that the industry does not universally prioritize safety above all. At the same time, there are strong incentives for any airline to not have a catastrophic safety incident. I recently flew on a 737 max and was willing to do so not so much because the FAA cleared them to fly but because I assume the pilots are not suicidal. In the absence of strong government safety regulations would things just devolve to YOLO? I'm not sure either way. Having said that, Chesterton's fence applies to any existing regulations.

> The Boeing 737 max crashes certainly demonstrate that the industry does not universally prioritize safety above all

There is regulation and there are consequences of not following the spirit of the regulation (most focus seems to be on compliance to the letter of the law and avoiding to do anything beyond that ignoring the spirit of the law). Consequences don't seem to be particularly deterring in much cases; the offending company pays a penalty, no executive goes to jail and people forget about it soon. Unless these executives get jail time, there won't be any fear of consequences.

This might be more of a reflection on the governance where you are. The idea of an unregulated country sounds terrible to me, and I am unaware of examples of it working. Most countries regulate things like aircraft safety with good effect. Regulating certain professions to ensure minimum standards is another good example.

If you have any interest, check out the below link for a great piece of legislation. It protects NZ consumers and effectively puts a warranty on everything you buy here.

Another example which I appreciate every day is the regulation imposed on our telecommunications industry. We have gone from a trash copper network to an excellent fibre network that is fast and inexpensive to use - all via regulation, investment and legislation.

Regulation works just fine when done properly, and I’d like more of it here in NZ. I’d like the supermarket monopoly broken up via regulation. I’d also like the building supplies and fuels racket broken up.

https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer...

That's interesting. At first glance, a safety issue looks plausible. But if it turns out someone is playing business optimization games with safety issues, by consciously creating the safety issues, with the intention of using them to get out of some other regulatory compliance... that doesn't sound in the spirit of the aviation safety programs.

In the US, I suspect that pretty much any personnel who observed this could raise it as an issue through an FAA safety reporting program. There are some protections for reporters.

(These programs, and the people and organizations who participate in them, are a big part of why aviation is as safe as it is. It's something a lot of people seem to take very seriously. It's pretty inspiring, IMHO, and if only we could collectively believe in other common goals like this, and execute as well.)

It's likely that there just isn't any legal oversight. They made this loophole, but there are intentionally no provisions to ensure it isn't abused. This is something that would need to be legislated again, but if they screwed up this badly this time (on purpose), I doubt that'll ever happen.

Aviation safety has oversight, whether or not this consumer-oriented legislation does.

Of course, that's not what I said.

We need some 3-strike rules for companies. Three 3-strikes like wrong reasons used and you are permanently out. Your property is confiscated and sold, wages are paid out, any debtors are paid if there is any money and rest is forfeited as penalty to state.

"Be a good person" is not a law I want anyone writing, because such a policy relies on the moral fortitude of random executive bureaucrats.

"Wrong" reason is subjective. Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially. Every hole in that increases costs far beyond the refunds themselves further down the line.

Air travel is not a high margin, luxury product, it's a lot margin mass market product with tons of competition - ergo costs are cut wherever possible. When you force airlines to take on costs for moral reasons, they basically are obligated to find as narrow an application of the moral reasoning as possible to keep costs down.

> Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially.

This is 100% false. Southwest Airlines is one of the most profitable airlines in the US and their refund policy for refundable flights is a full refund up to 10 mins before the flight. For nonrefundable flights you get full credit if you cancel up to 10 mins before your flight, with no additional fees.

During the pandemic, ALL airlines moved to full credit with no change fees if you cancelled your flight. Previously they would have absurd $200 change fees or loss of your flight.

The idea that airlines can’t survive with flexible, consumer friendly policies is a lie. Things like the check in fees or fuel surcharge are pure profit.

The airlines were buoyed by PPP loans.

Which didn’t even fully cover the dramatic drop in customers let alone these policy changes.

What people forget is companies are in competition, if every airline is forced to refund ticks then the industry simply reaches a new equilibrium with very slightly higher ticket prices. However, if any airline defects to worse customer service they all end up doing the same. Thus the need for customer focused regulations.

Airlines did not qualify for PPP loans. They did receive substantial direct support from the federal government however. PPP "loans" were reserved for businesses with less than five hundred employees that weren't worth very much (relatively speaking) either.

So even better than PPP loans??

Probably. All told the government basically covered 18 months of airline payroll expenses but the airlines had to pay about 25% of that back. PPP "loans" were intended as payroll support for a shorter period with 100% forgiveness in most cases.

No it's not 100% false, it's about 70% correct, refunds are in (expiring, non-transferable) flight credits not money-back. The preceding poster said "your money back" not "flight credits".

Flight credits expire (with US carriers, typically in 12 months, sometimes within only 3 months (Spirit), with European carriers, sometimes up to 3 years), and cannot be transferred to any other passenger [0], unlike even airmiles; and using them with partner airlines can be restricted; many passengers are unaware of much of that and airlines do not point it out, and rely on the fact that passengers may not realize till the credit has expired.

(In 7/2022, Southwest did uniquely eliminate expiration on flight credits unexpired from July 28, 2022 onward.)

Just because an airline only initially offers (restricted, expiring) travel credits, doesn't mean much; in some cases [1] passengers may be entitled to an actual money-back refund: (a) canceled flight b) passenger has documented medical circumstance c) cancellations due to Covid d) possibly other circumstance). One excellent advocacy resource is [2] Elliott.org 12/2022: "The complete guide to using your airline flight credit now". EU regulations are more pro-passenger than USDOT.

Southwest in 3/2022 unveiled its long-awaited new fare category "Wanna Get Away Plus" whose key perk is the ability to transfer flight credits, which Southwest calls travel funds (which sounds like intentionally misleading language, but anyway). But again, SW charge more for WGA+.

> Southwest Airlines... refund policy for refundable flights is a full refund up to 10 mins before the flight.

But that's the minority case: only Southwest's Anytime and higher fares are (money-back-)refundable, and they are typically way more expensive (2.5-4x) than non-refundable WGA fares. I can't find data but AFAIK most SW non-business passengers are WGA fares.

So the statement:

>> Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially.

is in the general case true.

(One well-known travel hack with SWA for frequent travelers who didn't know their departure dates 3 weeks in advance used to be to buy 3+ different non-refundable tickets spaced out by say a week each, then refund whichever tickets you didn't end up needing. This was still cheaper than one Anytime fare.)

[0]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2022/03/2...

[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/advice/2020/10/09/flig...

[2]: https://www.elliott.org/ultimate-consumer-guides-smart-trave...

> Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially.

Wait. I don’t understand you. “Nonrefundable” means to me that you who bought a ticket can’t decide to not fly and ask for your money back.

If the airline for whatever reason decides to not fly the route, or doesn’t have the capacity then that is a different thing altogether. Are you arguing that it is okay for an airline to take your money, do not provide you with the service promised and keep your money?

I fly a lot. But only on Delta and American. So I can’t speak to the other airlines. But they both have three tiers of tickets for the same main cabin seating. For Delta those are basic, main and main refundable.

Looking at a random domestic flight. The difference between the three tiers are about $30-$45 each.

Never buy Basic. But if you at least by the middle tier, while the tickets aren’t refundable, you can change the tickets without paying a fee or cancel a flight and get a credit that’s good for year.

The network works fine with people cancelling and changing flights all of the time.

The difference is a lot more, I usually see >100. But even for a cheap flight that was 138 jet blue basic, it's 60 for the middle tier and 110 extra for the refundable.

The middle tier is the real price in my opinion. The only reason the basic tier is there is as upsell opportunity and meant to be punishing.

I read somewhere that only 5% of seats sold on Delta are basic. I get it. It’s meant for people who are price sensitive. But aren’t those the ones who can least afford to lose money if something happens?

> I read somewhere that only 5% of seats sold on Delta are basic. I get it. It’s meant for people who are price sensitive.

Anecdata, but I believe most “basic” tickets on the big US airlines were paid for by someone other than the flyer. If an individual themselves were price sensitive, they’d fly a budget airline like say Spirit more than likely.

It's expensive to be poor—the good old "Vimes Boots Theory of economic unfairness".[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

Also see: I always suggest young people with limited but stable income to buy newer cars with warranties. They can least afford unexpected repairs.

Exactly. Basic Economy fares were created by airlines to artificially prevent them losing rankings against competitors (esp. LCCs) in the results box for OTEs like Google Flights, Kayak/Booking Holdings, Skyscanner/Trip.com.

I've had a customer rep openly admit to me that they don't expect that anyone should ever actually fly this fare, and strongly discourage them for "satisfaction reasons".

Yet another weaselly practice I found out the hard way recently was that some airlines rules (e.g. JetBlue) intentionally restrict it so that if one leg on a return ticket is Basic Economy, the other one must be too (even if it's priced $$ higher than plain Economy, as was in my case. It tooks me 2hrs of searches mysteriously failing when I tried to checkout ("Rule XXX does not allow this itinerary" and then it invalidates your entire flight search incl. seat assignments). Like the booking process couldn't simply tell you upfront. I called the support number and offered to show them a screenshot of the price difference and they didn't care. It was intentionally impossible to find the cheapest roundtrip price for my itinerary on their own website for any economy search, because their internal search engine typically shows the "cheapest economy fare" which will invariably tend to be basic economy for one segment; and of course this result is garbage if you have bags, which their engine doesn't even allow you specify. So you use a third-party OTE search engine.)

It's amazing the number of opaque anti-consumer practices the US airline industry gets away with.

The only legit use-case for a Basic Economy fare is a price-sensitive last-minute passenger who's 100% sure of their travel date(s)/one-way and has no luggage, or is willing to do without. Essentially what standby (or compassionate fares) used to be back in the 1990s, before the industry quietly killed those off.

Haha. As long as lobying is legal this will not happen.

The laws are basicaly made by those companies.

I don’t know if they’re operating yet for Canadian flights, but there are at least a few companies that will go through the hassle of battling it out with European airlines in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Worked for us when Swiss tried to give us the runaround by inappropriately using a similar exception to the one you’re describing.

Entirely predictable if you follow the history of the same protections in the EU. Many get out clauses and varying interpretations of the legislation meant lots of weaselling out claims. Many things were “extraordinary circumstances”

There have been various court cases to clarify and strengthen the regulations.

It will take another 5 years probably for the Canadian regulations to have a serious effect which gives the airlines plenty of time to shaft customers in another manner.

> Here is an example of how ridiculously far the airlines have gone in claiming everything is a safety issue,

These outlandish claims wouldn't work nearly as well as they do if claims of safety didn't cause a large part of the population to turn off their brain and side with whoever's making the claim regardless of the details.

Safety is often used as one of our modern analogs of "god's will."

Such things are rarely, if ever, included accidentally. There is far too much collusion between regulators and the regulated, and that hand-in-hand attitude moves upstream to those who write the laws and give them to the legislators to introduce.

On the other hand, punishing an airline for a delay due to a safety issue can have worse consequences.

> punishing an airline

The airline isn't being "punished" - they're being required to either complete a contract, or to compensate their counterparty for their failure to complete.

To take the example upthread, if the pizzaiolo drops a screw in my pizza, the resulting safety issue doesn't void the contract; he has to go off and make me a new pizza, or give my money back. It's not a punishment. If he can't complete on the contracts he makes, he has to stop selling pizzas or go broke.

I don't know any good reason why airlines shouldn't be subject to normal contract law.

The error is in trying to handle such a specific situation in the law. This should be sorted out using some form of court. If a customer is unhappy about any aspect of the service from any business, he can approach the court and the judge will decide what is appropriate. No super specific laws.

Courts are indeed famously level playing fields and easy and cheap to access for the common man.

If courts being inaccessible is the problem, then we should solve that. Not introduce insanely specific laws like this which are prone to abuse.

Lying to avoid a loss would be fraud, and therefore a pretty dangerous game.

But unfortunately pretty routine. In two out of two cases where I've claimed compensation for delayed/cancelled flights under the EU law, the airlines have outright lied about the causes and denied compensation.

In both cases, they were forced to pay out in arbitration after the arbitor determined that their stated causes were false (e.g. providing the tail number for a different aircraft that was legitimately delayed) , but there was no penalty for lying.

In such an environment, it's quite rational for them to lie and deny.

Surely these are engineered in cooperation with corporations so that politicians can get their win with the electorate and eat their corporate cash too?

They should make an addendum that any safety-related cancellations require a full inspection/re-certification of the aircraft that takes either a lot of time or a lot of money to go through. And any crew involved will be required to pass some sort of check flight or related process (at company cost of course.)

Make spurious 'safety' cancellations expensive, very expensive.

That would defeat the purpose. The point of the carveout is so that we don't accidentally incentivize the airlines to fly a flight that should be canceled for safety reasons, and this would do exactly that.

Perhaps they could require the people who make the go/no-go decision on flight safety to visit a prison every three months and receive a lecture on how this will be their new home if they knowingly approve a plane not safe to fly.

Threatening people does not improve safety, as people will tend to hide the issues instead of exposing them so they're fixed.

You are forgetting what the decision to blanket everything as a safety issue came not from the people who make the go/no-go decision on flight safety.

As a sibling comment says it would be just swept under the rug until planes start to fall.

Indeed. I feel like so many of these arguments that “airlines are making up fake safety or weather cancellation reasons; when’s the last time an airline crashed from a safety or weather reason; they’re over-stating the risks just to get out of paying penalties!” seemingly without reflecting on why the second clause is the case.

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