Airlines required to refund passengers for canceled, delayed flights
abcnews.go.com
abcnews.go.com
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/money-flight-cance...
> To be clear, passengers flying in the U.S. are already entitled to refunds when a flight is canceled or significantly delayed. No matter the cause — weather-related or not — airlines must pay passengers back for the unused portion of their ticket if the passenger ultimately chooses not to fly. It’s worth noting that the DOT does not define what constitutes a “significant delay.”
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/do-airlines-owe-yo...
The only thing I saw in this article that I don’t like is that they can still issue vouchers. And I didn’t see anything that said the vouchers had to be for more than the cash payment.
So I’m guessing if you miss your flight and are entitled to $300 (to pick an amount) they’ll be very happy to instantly give everyone a voucher for $100 off. Thus saving $200/head unless people know their rights.
How about: you must issue cash refunds PERIOD. No voucher nonsense.
Still, this is great.
> The refunds must be issued within seven days, according to the new DOT rules, and must be in cash unless the passenger chooses another form of compensation. Airlines can no longer issue refunds in forms of vouchers or credits when consumers are entitled to receive cash.
This is the bit. How much you wanna bet they’ll find ways to use this to screw people?
Sure, it's possible some grandma who almost never flies anywhere may still get confused but this new rule is still going to put even that kind of person in a far better position.
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-ad...
I've made out quite well on United. I had 2 flights back from London to NY where I accepted a 3 hour delay (with lounge access) and made a total over of $2500 in vouchers. The terms were generous too—a year to use them (extended by a year because it was around the pandemic), and you could partially use them, it just added to a "voucher balance" you could draw from.
No, you made out poorly. Wouldn't you prefer to have been paid more?
>The terms were generous too—a year to use them
Are you for real? That's not generous.
If you don't volunteer, you're much more likely to stay on the flight and not be paid anything.
And it ended up being around 3 or 4 years, but because of the pandemic. I honestly don't remember the original amount, 1 or 2 years. Either way I had no issue using them. I was even able to use them to pay for another traveler as long as I was also on the booking (bought my mother a ticket).
Side note: No need for this dismissive tone, my statements were obviously subjective—one person's generous can easily be another person's disappointing. So you're in violation of two HN guidelines:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Airlines _will_ frequently offer voluntary benefits in excess of this amount to maintain good relationships, and gate agents for, say, Delta, can even offer as high as nearly $10k [1], which is kind of crazy: you'd think they'd just fall back on the involuntary limits.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/delta-10000-offer-to-switch-fli....
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/united-airlines-flight-over...
> Searches for ‘Volunteer’ Definition Spiked 1900% After United Airlines Incident
https://time.com/4733425/united-airlines-volunteer-definitio...
I want to see some damn collective organizing. Can you imagine if passengers had started revolting against the idiot agents who abused the person arrested there?
The more pain airlines feel from the ensuing bad PR as a result of the chaos, the better that flying gets for everyone. I want airlines to fear the power of the customer.
As a passenger, I appreciate that my airfares are lower and some airfares have increased flexibility because the airlines have a deep understanding of the turn-up ratio and sell tickets in light of that fact. I appreciate the cases where [probably without my awareness] a flight or cabin crew/member [or maintenance tech and part] has been last-minute flown in to crew/fix a flight that I ended up taking rather than having it be cancelled.
Does it suck to be IDB'd? Sure. Does it happen often? Almost never (around 23 in a million or 1 in 44K embarkations). People in the US are about 5.5 times more likely to be killed in a car crash in a given year than be IDB'd on a given flight.
The airlines just don't want to pay fair market value to get someone off the plane and they get to use violence to get their way.
That means the airline most frequently reaches an acceptable agreement to someone. You might wish that they used some other process, but the process they are using usually gets to an agreement as it is.
I think this is not true
Hopefully now that the refund entitlement is automatic, vouchers will only make sense if they can beat the cash offer.
- (email) Delta: Your flight has been cancelled, and we are unable to rebook you onto another at this time. We're sorry for the inconvenience. Here is a voucher for a travel credit within the next year.
- (phone call) Me: Hi, I got this e-mail. I would like a refund for the flight.
- Delta: Oh, well, right now we're offering a travel voucher.
- Me: I saw that. I don't want a voucher. I paid for a flight, and that flight didn't happen, so now I want my money back.
- Delta: Well, that's not our policy.
- Me: Actually, I'm reading your current contract of carriage for domestic flights right now, and it says that you DO give refunds for cancellations upon request. And that makes sense, because I'm also looking at the federal regulations, which say that you are required to do that. So it is definitely your policy to offer refunds upon request. And I'm requesting.
- Delta: Oh. Well. I can put in a ticket, and we'll see what happens, but I can't guarantee anything...
and then a little while later I got a notice saying my refund was approved. It was a ridiculous runaround that never should have been allowed in the first place.
Everyone is going now pay the full, refundable fare rate, so not great if you want cheap tickets.
From https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-ad... (linked in TFA):
The final rule improves the passenger experience by requiring refunds to be:
Automatic: Airlines must automatically issue refunds without passengers having to explicitly request them or jump through hoops.
Prompt: Airlines and ticket agents must issue refunds within seven business days of refunds becoming due for credit card purchases and 20 calendar days for other payment methods.
Cash or original form of payment: Airlines and ticket agents must provide refunds in cash or whatever original payment method the individual used to make the purchase, such as credit card or airline miles. Airlines may not substitute vouchers, travel credits, or other forms of compensation unless the passenger affirmatively chooses to accept alternative compensation.
Full amount: Airlines and ticket agents must provide full refunds of the ticket purchase price, minus the value of any portion of transportation already used. The refunds must include all government-imposed taxes and fees and airline-imposed fees, regardless of whether the taxes or fees are refundable to airlines.
> "The fee is collected by air carriers from passengers at the time air transportation is purchased," according to TSA. "Air carriers then remit the fees to TSA."
(From https://thepointsguy.com/guide/taxes-and-fees-airline-award-...)
The cost to the customer is usually more than the price of the flight. Maybe they are late to another flight and since that will be their "fault" they will not be refunded. Maybe they miss a job interview, etc. Life isn't fair and what is owed is owed.
In fact, they have such great legal and accounting armies that I'm sure they can claw back those taxes from the IRS.
I am anti-airline here, I am loving where we are going with these things. But I don't agree with this: many delays happen precisely because they are doing their jobs right. This could be weather-related delays, observed mechanical issues, unexpected crew illnesses (note the plural), etc. And over the course of a day, these issues compound.
I think the government should refund the airlines the government taxes/fees for canceled/delayed flights due to weather or mechanical issues at least.
How often do you think airlines are filing taxes?
> The refunds must include all government-imposed taxes and fees and airline-imposed fees, regardless of whether the taxes or fees are refundable to airlines.
This is the provision I am responding to. If the airlines must refund the full value to the consumer, I do not see why the government should not also be refunding the airlines.
And I strongly contest the idea that any delay is a problem the airline themselves created. In fact, I believe the assertion is absolutely dead wrong. There are many externalities to on-time arrivals and departures that airlines cannot control. How could it possibly be an airline's fault if an airport hasn't cleared its runways of ice, or if a tornado is within 5 miles of the landing strip?
Of course I also believe airlines will disingenously attribute delayed departures to these externalities if able to, even if they are actually at fault, so I'm not sure what the "right" solution is here.
This is the comment from the OP that motivated me to comment. I think that is a definitively incorrect conclusion.
All of these costs should be part of doing business. You do not keep a dime form customers if they did not receive service, even if by an act of God.
If your business fails, then it failed. If others succeeded, then they were better then you or you got unlucky, and it's no one's job to make you lucky.
How often do you see businesses screwing over customers just because they can? You arrive late to a flight due to unforeseen circumstances, and the airline will not refund you, no matter what you do. Why should you accept this from them?
I feel very strongly about this because I have experienced how predatory these companies are. Last time I was on vacation, there was a natural disaster, and I could have let them keep my money just to support them. But after I landed there (having paid for the stay in full), I was presented with a resort fee of close to $500. They know I had nowhere else to go, so they took advantage. Well, it felt really great clawing all that money back after spending 2 days there. This feeling, they feel this every day when screwing customers.
They've failed to manage supplier risk.
It's my understanding that taxes aren't collected until well after the flight (service) has been fulfilled, and cannot be collected when it has not.
Sounds complicated.
The due date for submitting the previous quarter’s taxes will generally be late enough that the merchant can wait until most items or services sold at the end of the previous quarter have been delivered or performed.
If you have to refund a customer after you have submitted your taxes you can take the amount of tax that was included in the refund as a credit the next time you file with with the government.
Whether or not the taxes or fees are eligible for a refund to the airline (or don't have to be paid; payment of those will often be delayed) depends on the specific law applicable to each tax or fee, but with the new rule, that's the airline’s issue—they have to refund it to the customer whether or not the airline is still on the hook for it.
Always blows my mind that companies can take money _instantly_ from my credit card yet require 3-7 business days to refund it.
I know what you're doing you greedy fucks.
They are far more cautious about giving leeway on the conduct of the consumer than that of the merchant.
3-7 business days gives the merchant’s bank long enough to debit the funds, ensure they exist, then send them back, with a buffer for errors.
The bad news is that it will be decades before most major payment systems move to it.
I haven’t worked in fintech long enough to tell you why it was modeled to take so long, but I would hazard a guess that it’s because the primary method of moving money was paper checks and physical card impressions until the last couple decades.
If only that were the law in the US.
This is where I love the EU legislation. A part of having a flight delayed or cancelled is that the airline needs to inform you about your rights.
However, you can pay with a credit card and document the blatant rule breaking to them. They will refund you and bear legal risks. and unless you are in the wrong, the airline won't do. more about it.
I had a case with SAS some years ago, where mastercard simply refunded me. that was it.
By all means, suppress yourself to a regime of ultra large companies, if that makes you feel more safe – in this case you are merely paying protection money and the system you support is just like the mafia.
In the EU they do take another route: They try to make grounds for a more competitive environment such that anti-consumer behaviour does not make sense.
That is also why you don't see ultra large tech companies in the EU. And for consumer, that is a good thing, because it keeps companies in check.
I can furthermore say that I indeed has flown with this airline since.
Tech is different because the advantage of scale is huge. And Europeans use Facebook, iPhones, Google, just like everyone else so it's not like the competitive environment makes a difference in tech...
But the flight was canceled with less than 24 hours notice, so there were also statutory damages of €600/person (EU law), which in my case only covered the cost of my ongoing flight (booked separately, but same airline). It took two years to have the statutory damages rewarded, and after the legal fees didn't even cover the cost of the missed flight.
Companies should actually follow the law without having to be sued. Having to sue companies by default to get them to follow the law isn't a fundamental property of the rule of law. There's even a whole industry just created to enforce airline claims, because the companies ignore them with such impunity.
https://www.eccnet.eu/consumer-rights/what-are-my-consumer-r...
It was kind of amusing how she just went on Lufthansa's social media accounts and kept complaining.
The legislation really doesn't work as well as people think it does.
Not sure if this will change much in the USA, refunding is not that high of a cost either for airlines.
Same thing with the trains in the UK. We were delayed 3 hours, and our train was overbooked. I went into the LNER (or Virgin - can't remember when it happened) ticketing office in Kings Cross, and the guy at the counter basically told me that I could fill out the form, but if I didn't have a UK bank account they have no method of dispersing funds.
So then I went to a UK bank and was told I couldn't open a bank account without a UK address. So I opened an account with TransferWise (now Wise), and was given a UK bank account through them, but after filling out the form, I never got any reimbursement. So I'm guessing I didn't qualify for some other reason.
Although air carriers can offer passengers alternative compensation if the passenger chooses to accept it. For example, vouchers or a lower sum of money and no accommodation. Sometimes they present it as the only option to mislead the passenger.
If challenged in court on refusing to pay out, air carriers sometimes claim extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided. This is an exception in the law. But it is for really force majeure events, like real disasters. Meanwhile, airlines often claim that something like the airplane breaking down or an employee calling in sick is extraordinary circumstances. This falls squarely within ordinary day-to-day operations of an airline. So it doesn’t fly in court, but it’s used more as an intimidating tactic to show to the plaintiff that their lawsuit would supposedly fail and to force awful settlement terms.
Lots to be said about airlines trying to weasel out but it generally doesn’t work. Unless the passenger signs that they accept alternative compensation. I know the law doesn’t seem to allow that, but the phrasing is specific enough that it falls within the law.
I thought this was IATA regulations. US travelers are really getting the hard stick herr.
https://www.bahn.de/service/informationen-buchung/bahn-flug/...
In my case I had bought the train tickets separately from DB (online) and the flight tickets directly from the airline (also online). At the airport I have just shown the train tickets and it would have been easy to verify that indeed it had arrived with a huge delay, so it was not my fault.
> Buttigieg reiterated that refund requirements are already the standard for airlines, but the new DOT rules hold the airlines to account and makes sure passengers get the "refunds that are owed to them."
I was glad to get the refund, but when talking about a multiyear timeframe, I feel like I should get my money back with interest.
This was through British Airways.
Companies need to have an incentive to provide a good service.
Plane not full enough to make a big enough profit? Cancel the flight. Reroute the flight. Delay the luggage. Force passenger to check hand luggage in. Charge for every single possible thing.
I abhor flying. It makes me hate myself.
Turkish Airlines delayed us 2 days which we had to spend in the shittiest hotel they could find for the first night and then in the airport itself for the second night (not even giving us lounge access). They’re arguing the delay was only 7 minutes (seriously) and won’t do anything at all. It’s been 9 months of battle involving lawyers and they still won’t pay anything.
This is a step in the right direction but airlines still have a long way to go.
It feels like they used the pandemic to “push the envelope” and see how much more abuse customers will take, and set this as their new standard service level. AFAIK they also never rehired all the people they laid off which partly explains the sharp drop in quality.
Or maybe this is exactly what the world needs given how polluting and damaging flying is, I just didn’t expect it would be the airlines themselves doing all they can to discourage people from flying.
Luckily, in Europe, you can still visit a lot of beautiful places by train without the aggravation of flying. And when accounting for door to door times, flying isn’t that much faster anyway.
100 percent this. Like prior recessions, but even worse. With each recession we bounce back economically on the surface but the cuts they make rarely get reversed.
Thankfully, I lived in said city so we went home and came back the following day. One email to the airline gave us £800 in compensation, plus the cost of our food and Ubers back and forth. Our travel insurance paid out for most of the things we missed out on like the hotel night, events we had planned, prebooked meal, and even our airport parking (which we did technically use). We were done and dusted with it within 7 days.
When someone tells me to arrive 3 hours before my scheduled departure time, to me it's disrespectful that they would waste so much of my time so unapologetically.
Other people might see it as no big thing, an enjoyable chance to sit and read, or do some people-watching, or a comforting safety margin.
When someone tells me to take off my shoes and belt and shuffle through a metal detector while they take my wallet and keys out of sight, under the constant threat of even more intrusive searches - to me that's extremely undignified. There's no other situation in my life where people can control what I wear, or presume to separate me from my keys and wallet.
Other people might feel reassured by the process, or see it as no different to going to a swimming pool.
When someone demands I walk a needlessly winding path through a maze of tawdry shops selling overpriced perfume, to arrive at an uncomfortable seat surrounded by garish billboards.... you get the picture.
Technically most airlines only require you to arrive 60-75 minutes before departure for check-in. The 3 hour advice is just advice that you're free to ignore, but is probably a bad idea to do so given how much money/time is on the line. The 60-75 minutes might still sound like a lot, but gates typically close 20 minutes prior to departure, and boarding starts 40-60 minutes prior to departure, so they're only really asking you "waste" 20-30 minutes.
>There's no other situation in my life where people can control what I wear, or presume to separate me from my keys and wallet.
courts/some government buildings do similar security checks, and in some countries they do such checks in even more public places (eg. subways/malls/cultural sites).
I don't think margins are as large as you think they are... I checked Lufthansas 2023 income report and they made 6m EUR. For a company that size it's.. not impressive.
And flying a plane from point A to point B involves a huge amount of staff both onground and and in air, so cancelling a flight because it makes a loss or not enough is no surprise.
> And when accounting for door to door times, flying isn’t that much faster anyway.
I got a few days off work (finally) to go to Italy with the girlfriend. Total flight time is 4 hours with one stop.
Shortest train time is 26 hours, with 3 train changes.
> Shortest train time is 26 hours, with 3 train changes.
Not saying this works every time from anywhere to anywhere. I’ll personally reconsider my destination if I can’t get there with a train but that because of how much I hate flying.
I’ve also done 8–9h on the train, booked a first class ticket, and worked most of that time so that my travel time counted as paid work hours. Then I didn’t have to worry about how much toothpaste I have in my luggage, what the size of my carry on is, whether my bags will make it to the destination at the same time as I do, whether the seat will be too narrow with no legroom or just merely uncomfortable, figure out how to get out of the airport and to my actual destination without getting ripped off… it’s no contest for me. Not saying it’s the same for everyone obviously, just laying out my thought process for others to think about theirs.
Not mentioning pollution of course. The train emits much much less CO2 per distance traveled, makes less noise, less waste (all these single use utensils and boxes the food comes in).
The thing is, the majority of people will choose the ticket that is cheaper, even if there is a small chance of getting shafted. just look at how quickly ryanair grew, despite everyone knowing that each flight is a gamble.
So a carrier can either play by the legacy rules, and get eaten, or they have to play by the new rules
I also buy the cheapest plane ticket I can find when going somewhere because I know it will suck, I'll get shafted, and I'll regret my decision no matter what. I can't tell if paying for the more expensive tickets (within the same fare bucket) will result in any improvement or just throwing the extra money out of the window because I'll get the same experience as the cheapest one so I go for the cheapest.
In these cases, the market cannot regulate itself IMHO. It's a race to the bottom and if there is no legislation to compel actors to a minimal set of rules/conditions then we end up where we are with air travel now: it sucks more and more.
Rest of us understand flying isn't perfect and bad stuff can and does happen, especially when its the last thing you need (ie well rested after long holidays and then some nightmare happens when flying home) but that's life. I've experienced the same also with Turkish airlines, stellar customer experience, 400 euro compensation on top of luxury hotel and direct ticket next morning. If you are so desperately risk-averse, yeah travel by train, those 2 days to Seville are wonderful (I've done it, but compared to 90 minute flight its pretty bad way to spend weekend and if you have small kids there is no discussion). Destinations further are simply not reachable in any other reasonable way.
Volcano blows up on Iceland or Sicily? Bam, half of the world is affected for days. Iran sends hundreds of rockets on Israel? Colleague of my wife got stuck in Jordan for few days. There is stuff constantly happening and events have cascade effects. Ever saw plane you just boarded suddenly be swarmed by technicians, and have it declared unable to fly afterwards? Imagine real world effects of such event. Plus airlines have razor thin margins, expecting perfection is... not logical to keep things polite.
But in terms of quality I'm okay with "you get what you pay for". You don't have to fly low budget.
There really need to be bettwer laws for making sure customers are fully informed of what they are buying. This goes extras for things like cheap flights where you are essentially gambling.
That's not what I found? [1] The article states:
The company more than doubled its net profit to 1.7 billion euros (previous year: 790 million euros).
It was seriously the worst experience I’ve ever had. Rude staff, no explanations, outright lies, condescending tone, hours long queues for meal vouchers that arent accepted annywhere or to get a crappy hotel for a few hours only, and just plain incompetence. I will never fly TK again, that’s how bad it was.
We went to the check-in for our flight to Sapporo and the staff told us that our flight was actually yesterday... Not wanting to waste another minute with Turkish Airlines support I opened my laptop and got us a new flight and luckily there was a flight in 2 hours.
As our flight was flying off from EU we were covered by the EU rights and all of us got full compensation for the delay - 600 Euro (420 at the end as we used 3rd party to handle it).
Now I'm trying to get full reimbursement for the flight from Tokyo to Sapporo as I payed for it out of pocket. They are arguing that each of us should have an individual invoice and we should have not bought group tickets. For this reason I would highly recommend to use 3rd party (they take between 25-30% commission) just not to deal with airline BS.
You can pay for a slightly better experience, but it's very expensive!
I also detest the Istanbul Airport with the bottom of my heart. Everything is overpriced and subpar in quality - unsurprising given that the entire airport project turned into a large graft by AKP affiliated industrialists.
For the most part, this is on the passengers. Everybody wants to bring the largest hard sided rolling luggage that could possibly be a carry-on these days. Those things take up space in the overhead bins very inefficiently, and the planes weren't made with that amount of carry-on capacity per passenger.
But something I thought of the other day is that when they start gate checking bags, it means they sold too many tickets that include a full size carry-on, right? Counterpoint would be that the later boarding groups implicitly may have to gate check their bags, and that's why they're cheaper.
I'm pretty adamant that most people should use soft travel backpacks or duffel bags. The proliferation of hard sided rolling luggage as a carry-on is a scourge.
* Airlines didn't charge so much for checked luggage
* Airlines didn't routinely lose checked luggage
* Airlines didn't routinely mishandle checked luggage, ripping bags, damaging contents and scuffing or tearing off wheels.
* Airlines didn't deny luggage repairs/replacements for damaged ones.
I've had Delta punch a hole through a hardshell suitcase with an aluminum frame and deny that it was damaged "beyond normal wear and tear"
This was far, far less common before they started charging for checked bags. Once they made that an upsell opportunity, people started behaving in exactly the way airline policies encouraged.
The other big reason is the airlines choosing to ignore baggage theft. I had a bag stolen out of SFO and they tried to first disclaim responsibility and then offered to reimburse it at like $2/pound, which again means that they’re giving customers a financial incentive to carry everything into the cabin.
Usually, when you pay through the nose for something, you at least get treated well.
Don't know if that legally exempts them from refunding both if they had to refund one.
Also, I checked on google flights and a 2 hour flight is roughly equal to an 11 hour drive. Even if you factor in arriving 3 hours early for departure and 1 hour to get to your final destination, the time savings alone is worth most of the cost of the trip. If you factor in gas/wear on your car it's a no-brainer, even if it's "expensive".
[1] Chicago to washington DC
[2] $200 round trip, $100 for one way, 5 hours * $15/hour = $75
So, JetBlue took the money for a service they knew they could not provide (but I didn’t, having read the various airline rules and settled on JetBlue as a result). When it came time to fly, American wouldn’t carry them (now 700 miles away from the family) and JetBlue wanted to keep the money, offering a JB credit expiring in 1 year.
All I did was get a JetBlue customer care agent to confirm they would not issue a refund and took that screenshot to my credit card company who approved the chargeback.
We ended up having to pay the unaccompanied minor fees and aggravation on both ends to get them home on Delta, who is at least in the linked business of selling tickets and actually transporting passengers on those tickets, while JetBlue is better at the former than the latter.
The real mess happens when a flight is cancelled and the airline rebooks passengers already in-route. Last year our kid was on an Iceland Air route in a connecting city when they cancelled the next leg. Someone at their flight operations center "helpfully" rebooked the ticket to a British Air flight leaving that city an hour later, except BA has a 14 limit and denied boarding (kid was a few weeks shy of 14 at the time). In fact, the BA gate agents couldn't even understand how it was possible for a 13 year-old to be issued a ticket (because it was done in the back-end inter-airline system). So our kid ends up stranded in a distant connecting city. We ultimately had to buy a last-minute one-way ticket on a third airline to a different city for a connection on an airline that would board her. It took months of calls to eventually get a refund from Iceland Air for a multi-thousand dollar business class ticket, on a flight they cancelled. (note: For anyone concerned, our kid is a hyper-savvy frequent flyer who grew up flying international routes. Also, for international routes we always book her business class in an isolated seat that's in its own row right next to the crew galley.)
We have a friend who's kid goes to a boarding school in the U.S. (but on the opposite coast). All the major U.S airlines now have 15 or 16 age limits. For spring break a few weeks ago, they had no choice but for one parent to fly across the country and back, both ways, just to "accompany" their kid past the gate boarding agents. Because almost all U.S airlines are now unaccompanied kid hostile, our kid can't even connect internationally from our local airport. Instead we have to drive her three hours to an airport that international airlines fly direct from.
Per https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/travel/accessibility-and-as..., it seems like they’ll accept unaccompanied minors potentially as young as 5.
For those coming from or going to "feeder cities", there are often no direct flights. That's what the issue is for our friends as they are both coming from, and, going to feeder cities in the U.S.
For us, no U.S. airline offers direct flights from the U.S. West coast to Geneva. There are many routes but they are all connections through NY, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, etc. Swiss Air also has no direct flights from the U.S. West to Geneva, but they do have direct flights from an airport over three hours drive from our home to Zurich. Six hours driving round-trip is a hassle but at least possible (sometimes requiring an airport hotel stay for very early or late flights). From Zurich it's an easy one hour flight to Geneva and from there a couple hour train ride to the school. Fortunately, Swiss Air (and a lot of international airlines) have no problem with 13+ year-olds connecting. It's been 13+ for a long time because I did it internationally when I was a kid - and that was the era of carbon triplicate paper tickets and no cell phones :-).
I think Lufthansa changed their policy a few years ago only because they code share so much with United. It's really the U.S. airlines that started changing from 13 to 16 being the minimum for unaccompanied connections. I suspect a U.S. airline had some unaccompanied connecting teen go AWOL and got sued over it, then their lawyers decided the legal exposure just wasn't worth it. Unintended consequence: free-range and outward bound Summer camp and school experiences got a lot more expensive and challenging for U.S. 13 to 15 year-olds. The international boarding school our daughter attends is terrific (and going was her idea). It has students from over 80 countries but they told us there are a lot fewer from the U.S. in the last five years.
> for international routes we always book her business class
jeez, my parents would stick me in coach even if they were in F on the same flight, however long the flight was.
Clearly, they love you so much they were willing to ensure your resilience was forged from the steel of rough living. :-)
When I got back to Brazil I took united to the small claims court and got my money back plus some.
My dad recently filed in small claims for lost luggage after the realization there was no phone number for a human to speak with as everything is “live” chat where each chat takes ten minutes for a response. The check came in the mail days after notification of filing.
Granted it was a budget airline, but it’s not that different from waiting on hold to get transferred.
You laugh, but similar stuff has happened in the context of IP/Patent law. de facto retaliation is real in the legal system
Didn't get as far as court as I went to mediation and got a settlement. Worked out well; would definitely do it again.
Using experience in NJ and CT the processes were similar.
You find the docs on the court system website and write out your petition then file it. You also need to deliver it to the other party and provide evidence of delivery to the court but that’s just USPS signature-required mail.
You can request cost of the filing in your claim too, and it was ~$70 to file.
I had to use it with landlords to get back security deposits. Well worth the $70 and a couple of hours of time.
This was also a budget airline (Norwegian). I’m pretty sure they’re trying to deny claims as a rule. They were making an excuse that isn’t a valid force majeure (the airplane needed emergency servicing).
My experience with Scandinavian has been the exact opposite, I pretty much just inform them of which flight I was on and that I’m interested in compensation and that’s it. Though this was pre-COVID and reconstruction.
It doesn’t seem like it ought to have been legal to sell me a ticket claiming departure and arrival times that were extremely unrealistic. United knew the construction was happening, I did not.
I was given the option to refund my ticket but it would have canceled the return flight as well, and last minute flights to SJC instead were prohibitively expensive.
The EU’s policy of forcing airlines to compensate travelers for delays seems like it better incentivizes the airlines to improve service.
Edit: just checked the NOTAMs and it’s been this way since January 18th, and expires on May 28th. Plenty of time for airlines to get their act together.
Compare the EU where they're not only required to refund you in full, but also compensate you up to 600 euros.
Note that compensation doesn't apply to weather related events and other 'not in our control' things, but the scope is pretty narrow.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/22/weather/why-flights-get-c....
Don't know what disclaimer you're referring to but in the EU you still get a full refund for cancellations no matter what the reason.
The fines are there to disincentivise the airlines from skimping on staffing or maintenance, causing delays, and lumping passengers with the expenses incurred by having to rearrange travel at short notice.
I assume there is some kind of system in place to prevent airlines falsely claiming bad weather to escape the compensation rules.
I don't think it's reasonable for airlines to expect to maintain the same number of departures that worked in the nice summer months through the winter. Runways will need to be cleared, planes will need to be de-iced.
They could keep extra planes and staff around ready to replace an incoming flight if it's delayed (clearly easier for carriers with fewer types of aircraft). Heck just staff seem like they would be handy as the flight crew hit their service limits.
But there's no financial incentive to do that if "weather" (despite happening every winter) is a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The airline is still very incentivized to get you were you are going on time. Planes and crews still need to get where they were going so it’s much better for everyone involved if it’s a full plane with an on time arrival for passengers.
> They could keep extra planes and staff around ready to replace an incoming flight if it's delayed
Exceptional/unexpected weather is one thing. But the concept of winter isn't exceptional. Deicing and snow clearing is a known factor. In Tampa that's an exceptional thing, in Helsinki it's not.
The thing with this regulation (and the EU one) is that airlines can't just compete on running with minimal margins and skeleton crews every days, where a single unscheduled repair or sick crewmember sends ripples of delays through the system. For travellers to have any security there needs to be some sort of slack in the system. A spare crew, or a spare plane. So how do you make that not a catastrophic market disadvantage? Like this. By making airlines economically responsible for delays.
Agree. So they don’t sell tickets for those flights that don’t run, then there’s nothing to compensate.
Operate fewer flights if they are going to struggle to operate the ones they sell tickets for.
Scanning a forum like flyertalk shows that most airlines basically refuse to voluntarily honor this law without being forced to in court (not even the threat of a lawsuit will get them to pay, you actually have to file it).
Getting 75% would be a windfall.
I once had a flight Bulgaria -> Moscow -> South Korea, and the second leg got delayed for 6 hours, resulting in a very miserable experience.
Because I was sleep deprived and had no idea what my rights were, I accepted the $20 “compensatory voucher” that they offered and thought the matter was closed.
Sometime after I got back, a company contacted me saying they will issue a court case on my behalf getting the €800 from the airline (2 passengers). Such companies thrive under the “loser pays” system in europe as they just take on those slam dunk cases and have their expenses compensated.
Long story short after about 2 years of going through courts I got the money (minus the 30% fee from the company), and all I did was answer 2 emails and wait it out.
The only people on flyertalk will be the people that do have issues. People that don't have issues won't go there to post that everything is fine (e.g. me).
I have never dealt with any emails, the airlines I've dealt with always have a form on their website to claim compensation. I fill it in and in a week or two I get the money. Swiss has one too[0].
I pretty much always try and book the shortest layovers possible if I'm not in a rush and the airline will sell me the ticket. 55 minute layover in Heathrow? Let's go! There's probably a 50% chance that I miss that connection and get compensated.
[0] https://www.swiss.com/de/en/customer-support/contact-us/appl...
I never calculated the net value of my €200 compensations for €80 flight tickets, but I have a feeling I managed to gain money from my accumulated flights during the six months when I travelled back and forth between Stockholm and Amsterdam quite a bit.
For the longest time Ryanair actually gave me more money than I spent with them on tickets.
The legal route might have a long satute of limitations but you should still not let a company stall for this long and instead file a dispute with the payment provider as soon as the company is being uncooperative.
My mum had a significantly delayed flight - she should get 400 euros. 18 months after, she still has nothing - on the phone, they just say that the relevant departement will look into it but they don't answer to customers directly, and emails are just ignored.
We did contact the relevant governement agency - they say the current wait time for them to do something is >12 months.
It seems there is a business of law agencies specializing in extracting those compensations - but they take a big cut.
We did not file a dispute - there is an government agency which specifically manages the cases of those refunds, and they are 'fully booked' for more than a year.
I have purposefully been only booking on EU airline operated flights only after having been bitten twice before where I missed a connection and had to wait 7h (my home airport has only very few flights to the major intercontinental hubs, meaning any connection delay ends hub being quite significant). I have collected several thousand euros in delay compensation since then (multiple airlines) , never had to fight the airline to get it, simply filling in a form.
I was traveling 2 years ago with 4 people - flight was delayed enough that we were entitled to a 600EUR per person compensation (2400EUR in total, which is already something..).
The captain of the delayed flight said that the delay was due to a previous delay in some other airport of the same aircraft due to some "traffic jam" (= not due to weather). However, when requesting the compensation, I was immediately shut down by the airline that this delay was due to "unforeseen circumstances" and what that exactly was, is a business secret that they can't disclose (wth?). They essentially told me to get lost and I'm free to file a complaint/dispute with the consumer protection agency.
I reached out to the Italian consumer protection agency (idk what the exact name was) who according to EU rules is responsible for solving these disputes but they never answer to emails or to the online form that they have for these disputes. The EU wide organization that deals with these topics says that they can't do anything and only the Italian consumer protection agency as the authority to deal with this.. but they are ghosting me.
As often with eu regulations there are a couple of loopholes so you have to watch out nevertheless (eg force majeur like bird strikes doesn’t count, or when the flight is delayed to next day they have to pay your food and hotel but I decided to book another flight and then they don’t have to pay anything back except the fixed fee which I didn’t know…)
Actually, once my flight (to Europe) was delayed by like 4h because they had an air traffic controller strike in another country THE NEXT DAY and kind of shuffled their plane fleet across the continent to make it work. Airline denied me my (i think it was 600 Euros) compensation using the force majeur strike argument. That was the only time I went to one of those services that went to court for me for like 30% of my claim. They really did go almost all the way until the airline took the very last exit before a trial.
Sometimes I like consumer rights.
I would want compensation from the controllers' bosses (French government?)
We were directed to their kiosk, where after 2 hours of waiting and 2 hours of explaining/negotiating we were rebooked on a flight next day, with "all our airport and contract accomodations are full, find your own one, condor will refund". Spent the night in €700/night hotel (fourth I called, first to actually had rooms).
Afterwards we sent all info/invoices throug mail. First reply: we refund your expenses, but not flight compensation ($600 per person), because the delay was not our fault, the delay was less than 4(6?) hours, and (despite the flight landing in EU, which is all it takes for EU legislation to apply) the flight is not covered by EU legislation, because it originated from outside EU.
Sent extempt from law saying they have to pay us, or we will involve layers. Next email said they will issue full requested refund (which they did).
So, apart from having to threaten with legal action and having to know our rights trough Condor lies, pretty good outcome.
There is a second condition, which in your case (Condor) seemed to fulfilled, though:
> EU air passenger rights apply:
> If your flight arrives in the EU from outside the EU and is operated by an EU airline
(Emphasis mine; source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...)
I recently ran into this when I was flying from the US to Europe with United and they canceled my flight and put me on a different one that arrived half a day later. -> Nothing I could do because I incurred no tangible costs (no additional hotel stay etc.) other than losing time and starting work the next morning completely jet-lagged.
It really is beyond me why the EU holds European airlines to a much higher standard than foreign ones which, effectively, works as a subsidy for foreign airlines flying to/from Europe.
Nevertheless a weird discrepancy.
I always get downvoted for saying anything negative about EU consumer protection…but the protections are so well known and claimed, that it’s hurting airlines financially so they devise strategies. The politicians know this. Absolutely they do. The protections are only as good as how easy they are to claim
And anyway we are basically paying for this insurance anyway through increased fares and fees and baggage costs etc.
An aircraft is out of position, so the flight is definitely going to be cancelled, but instead of cancelling the flight, every 10 minutes, they'll announce a further 10 minute delay to the flight.
If you get frustrated and leave before its officially cancelled, there's no compensation to pay.
The moment it hits 3 hours, and compensation will have to be paid, the flight is suddenly cancelled.
Before, I think it was a matter where once the airlines had your cash, they were loathe to give it back.
This really needs to be considered on its own merits. And, in my view, it still happens to warrant a refund, when asked, when the delay is significant.
Conversely, with a hotel, if they overbooked and I cannot stay there, there are usually quite a few locations nearby where I can get a room for a night. I've had this happen a few times and it's never been more than a minor inconvenience.
IDK, they both suck.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/money-flight-cance...
No. The headline is a lie. See the article:
>The DOT rules lay out that passengers will be "entitled to a refund if their flight is canceled or significantly changed, and they do not accept alternative transportation or travel credits offered."
In other words, evermore useless travel credits will be accepted and nothing will have fundamentally changed.
If my flight is cancelled I’m entitled to a refund if I refuse any other compensatory measures?
The wording definitely implies that customers may be offered alternative transportation or travel credits, but that they have the right to not accept those, and take a refund instead.
I was one of the travelers impacted by that meltdown. I waited hours and hours in the airport because of “delays”. One by one, every flight was cancelled. Southwest made everyone wait in a single file line to rebook their flight a week or two out (of course after Christmas). A couple days later they cancelled that flight too. So they issued vouchers. No way I would use a voucher for an airline that can’t get it together. I’m glad there will be cash refunds now so folks don’t get trapped with a bad airline.
If I purchased a ticket for $399 but a comparable ticket now costs $799, I can't buy a new ticket with that refund.
Edit: oh by the way, i didn’t get refunded for the segment that flew me across the nation just to stand me in denver. The refund was prorated And only counted for the second segment.
Anyone who doesn’t think airlines need more regulations on cancellations and refunds clearly hasn’t flown regularly.
re-routing should be offered at no additional cost to the passenger, even where passengers are re-routed with another air carrier or on a different transport mode or in a higher class or at a higher fare(...)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52...
In practice I believe this is usually applied like "If there is availability on the same day on the original airline then book that, else the first available flight on a different airline". Of course in the first case the airline is also on the line for the hotel costs etc.
I don't think the US regulation has the same sort of teeth (yet) but it should at least be made clear. For flights, booking an alternative flight is invariably going to be a lot more expensive than the original one. And regulation that only reimburses the original fare, allows rerouting on the same airline, or doesn't offer cash compensation in addition to sorting out the journey, is pretty bad even if it's a step in the right direction.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
Then I started testing, and guess what? you end up together regardless. So fear based sales.
Much bigger problem is that in EU you get 28” pitch on BUSINESS class seats! The only difference is that middle seat is blocked. This frankly should be illegal.
I used an online service (airhelp) to claim it. They initially took 35% as their fee. After around 4-5 months the airline rejected the claim and lawyers from airhelp stepped in which made their fee 50%. It took 7-8 more months, total 1 year, to get 50% of my claim back (~800£) using a third party service.
Given how complicated it is to fille a claim, even if I did it myself I would have given up on first rejection. I hope this law expands beyond US.
Pretty sure there is already a law. It's an EU law but I believe it was backported to the UK after Brexit.
The problem is that unless there is good enforcement and proactive auditing of compliance it is no good. In this case there is near-zero enforcement so a law merely being on the books doesn't help.
Since then, I always try to book plane tickets with PayPal. It is a bit ironic that as an EU citizen, I was screwed by EU company (Lufthansa), EU politicians (German government), but saved by a private US company (PayPal) :D
However for the first time in a few years I had to take a trip this past week on United. Our flight was boarded, the pilots found an issue and called maintenance. It was determined that the flight had to be cancelled, so all passengers had to deplane. The crew kept telling us all of us would be rebooked and would get notification via text or on the United app with next steps, we could also talk to a gate agent. It did take about 30 minutes but they did in fact give me a notification of options for other flights, I took all of one button press to select my new itinerary. Also I had paid for upgraded seats, specifically emergency aisles. As they were not available on all of my new flights they issued me a reimbursement for those costs. For those who had to stay over they paid for hotel and food.
It is never fun to have a flight cancelled on you but in my experience this was definitely one of the better "customer service" experiences I have had. Really can't complain about how they handled it which gives me hope that technology will allow them to offer better and more timely customer service going forward.
What about airlines in other countries? Like Air Canada from Canada, and Lufthansa from Germany?
EU has much more strict rules. The airline must not only refund you, but compensate you too if the flight was cancelled less than 14 days before departure and the cancellation wasn't due to extraordinary circumstances. I.e. heavy rain and storm or a volcano eruption the airline could not have done anything to complete the flight in spite of. Stuff like technical problems or a strike [1] is generally 100% on the airline.
See https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right... for the details.
[1] Strikes internal to the airline, i.e. by airline staff. Strikes external to the airline may in some cases count as extraordinary circumstances.
They closed all service desks after flight cancellation (no strike, just their crew planning issues) and sign told us to find own flights and hotels.
Few months later I went to this service desk again in Frankfurt, their response was "Go get a lawyer, we wont help with old cases"
Thankfully soep-online.de helped to get all money reimbursed but it took 13 months.
At a minimum they should be required to provide the odds of a flight to be delayed or canceled before the day-of to allow customers to reschedule ahead of time to get to their destination on time.
Refund of money doesn't matter when you have a place to be at a certain time, especially if you plan months in advance, only to find out 3 hours ahead of time (and at 3:30am in the morning) that your planned flight for months is suddenly canceled for "non-operation".
Literally on a cross-country vacation right now where this is the second time that a flight has been delayed/canceled on me in the past two years (American Airlines). I want to be a loyal customer, but this feels very one sided, and any monetary recourse certainly isn't enough when you hsve a place to be at a certain time (and aren't informed that it's possible you won't make it there, or else worst case you can drive)
1. This is going to shutter a few more regional airlines, as they will deem it unprofitable to issue refunds over flying emptier planes.
2. This will encourage rolling delays even more.
Also, good for the environment.
also, i bought the ticket from priceline, who "expunged" there database for customers from 2 years ago and older...which sounds quite convenient and sketchy.
Just yesterday I got confirmation of an EasyJet refund for a flight that arrived 4 hours late due to an engine problem during the previous flight.
250€ in my bank account within 7 days from the flight. The flight had costed me 130€. I flew for a profit.
EU works.
However, if you have two airlines and one failed to get you to the airport for the second flight, the second airline doesn't owe you any compensation, but the first will.
It’s clearly a high demand service. Couldn’t they just provide a good service and make money?
It's probably due to the power balance. Corporate consolidation is at an all time high so what choice do you have when they all have the same shitty policies.
If it we’re so fundamentally shitty, we should overall reduce air travel and expectations around it that exist in business and culture, not continually prop it up by making the entire experience dreadful.
Still, this is a step in the right direction.
I get better customer service from Air France (French), Devialet (French) and Free Telecom (French) than I get from United (American), Google (American) and Facebook (American).
What does this tell us? Absolutely nothing.
[1] I flew business class on Air France and the "lie flat" seat would only go down to a 30 degree angle and they acted like I was inconveniencing them by asking for help and then told me that's how it's supposed to be despite everyone else's seat being clearly flat. Never got solved. Contacted support after and never heard back. Typical experience with European companies. Don't want to work, don't want to admit fault, no resolution unless forced by regulation.
[2] Took 2 months to get a refund of a cancelled flight. Customer service was completely incompetent and powerless, telling me that "it's coming in 48 hours". Had to call like 6 times over the span of months.
Don't get me started on how Festicket refused to give me my money back after an event got canceled, forcing me to charge back with credit card (thank you, American banks), or how there's a 50% chance European car rental places will try to scam with fake damage or extra fees. I had to teach an AVIS manager in Palma that prepaying for gas (unwillingly, mind you) means that I don't pay for an empty tank at the end of the trip.
We just got 1600GBP back from British Airways for a flight delayed by 24hrs.
I think I am seeing more mis-spellings in news nowadays.
Btw escalate it to CAA and they will handle this. Not only you will get a refund but the compensation as well
An airline which has decent customer service and who pays out for refunds would have higher ticket prices and noone would use them.
At least now you can get your money back after your ticket being rendered useless.
Airlines here are also significantly less likely to cancel your flights, and in my experience (I've taken somewhere in the region of 200 flights in the last 10 years) there is a bit of wiggle in terms of your actual arrival time, but being more than an hour out is less likely than int eh US.
Such a policy implies the most corrupt and criminal companies should get the least oversight possible.
I might be crazy, but I think that's backwards.
It is common for industries to have settle on points / equilibria based on what other players are doing, and companies typically don't unilaterally rock the boat too much.
However external factors act as forcing functions (I call them nucleation sites as a crystallization analogy) around which new equilibria can develop. Regulatory changes are one such example.
For example, during COVID many hotels shifted to not doing daily housekeeping. At that point they cited social distancing or workforce shortage reasons.
But it's been 2 years since the pandemic was completely over and many hotels now still don't do daily housekeeping. The prices of course haven't reduced.
Back in 2014 when California had a drought, my car dealership stopped offering free washes as part of the maintenance package citing bullshit "let's do our part in saving water" reasons.
The drought is long over but the free car washes have not come back.
They used to do daily housekeeping automatically.
Now they don't.
We went from a default of "Opt-out" to "Opt-in"
This change happened across many hotels only during the pandemic despite the fact that, according to the parent poster, they could have done it any time, there was no regulation forcing them to do daily housekeeping.
So?
Hardly worth crying about and most of us prefer it this way.
The conversation is in the context of airlines making changes to their policies, and the parent poster made a claim that there was nothing stopping them from making those changes as there was no regulation or otherwise preventing them.
I am making the argument that wide changes in industries don't typically happen just like that even if there is no specific entity stopping them from making those changes. Industries settle on some equilibria, and trigger events like the pandemic or other major issues create the seed around which many players simultaneously implement changes.
The housekeeping change is an example of that.
It doesn't matter whether the older system is better or newer. The point is that hotels could have switched to a opt-in system any time, but most did not. The wide change happened triggered by the pandemic.
If airlines have a cost to being late/cancelling, then that will balance against the cost of having e.g. N% slack in staff/aircraft/schedules. It most definitely helps reduce cancellation and delays.
If you are curious whether this is bullshit, the best experiment would be to time travel back a N years, take two similarly sized continents with lots of flying, and use this type of regulation on one continent and not the other.
"Alternative transportation or travel credits" it will be, they will be useless. Nothing has fundamentally changed.
or if they offer you 10k miles or travel credit, and you accept, you don't also get a refund.
the point is, a refund to original form of payment is the default.
please stop posting your misinformed reading of the text through the thread.
I'm reading it as:
- (think the alt-transport or credits are good) -> accept -> don't get refunded
- (think the alt-transport or credits are worthless) -> do not accept -> get refunded