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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.