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As someone who knows somebody that recently had a flight cancelled (then booked another flight at the same airport, only for that flight to get cancelled as well), it was very frustrating to hear that all the airlines in question would do is issue a voucher that expires in 3 months and requires the exact same people to travel alongside you (i.e. if you purchased a ticket for yourself and a relative, then the voucher only applies to flights where you and this exact same relative are boarding). It seems like a pretty blatant way for airlines to keep customer's money. Too bad this rule didn't come sooner.

Pretty sure US airlines have had to give you refund for canceled flights for years.

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...

They do, but they’ll never tell you that. You have to know.

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.

> How about: you must issue cash refunds PERIOD. No voucher nonsense.

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.

> Airlines and ticket agents must issue refunds within seven business days of refunds becoming due for credit card purchases

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.

This doesn’t change the premise of your argument but to clear up your understanding - no one is able to instantly take payments from your credit card. Your credit card company records the transaction as having taken place long before any money actually moves.

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.

Why does that require so many days? Banking is all digital, yet it is still being treated like it's the 1950s.

Well, the good news is that the Fed recently rolled out the first phase of a replacement ACH system (FedNow) that does instant transfers.

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.

I wonder how the taxes and fees refund works. Fees I can see airlines trying to say “we already paid these”, but taxes are only charged on services rendered, no? Is there a situation where the airlines have already paid sales tax to the local authority and don’t get a refund for canceled service?

Well, refund everything. A delay is them not doing their job right, as promised. There should be a cost to that, and if they are forced to refund 100%, maybe delays/cancellations will be fewer.

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.

> A delay is them not doing their job right, as promised.

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.

I don't think they're paying taxes at the time the ticket is purchased. I'm very sure they're not paying taxes on cancelled flights, as long as they're refunding the principle.

How often do you think airlines are filing taxes?

I am responding to this:

> 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.

What if those taxes and fees pay for ATC which helped get a diverted flight to an alternate airport? Or for all the navigational aids along the way?

> How could it possibly be an airline's fault if an airport hasn't cleared its runways of ice?

They've failed to manage supplier risk.

I don't think saying "They collected payment for a service they then did not provide" is necessarily blaming them, it's just saying that if you collect money for something they customer does not receive you have no grounds to hold on to the money.

> A delay is them not doing their job right, as promised.

This is the comment from the OP that motivated me to comment. I think that is a definitively incorrect conclusion.

I am willing to bet that their risk and pricing departments have accounted to losing some percentage of revenue in refunds to delays. Then they decided over time to start making it harder to refund customers, and then they started accounting for the perfentage of customers that actually fight for their rights, and maybe it's 10% of all affected customers. So they decided to account for the other 90% of suckers, as actual revenue, so that now if you threaten it, they will cry that you're going after their already low profits.

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.

> I think the government should refund the airlines the government taxes/fees for canceled/delayed flights due to weather or mechanical issues at least.

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.

I’m with you. Telling airlines they need to refund due to weather or bad mechanics just invites them to take more risks.

There are also government-imposed taxes such as the U.S. Transportation Security Administration instituted Passenger Fee, which is charged as soon as the ticket is bought:

> "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-...)

Of course it's charged as soon as the ticket is bought, no airline is selling a ticket then coming back later to collect taxes. The quote you provided only says "Air carriers then remit the fees to TSA.", it doesn't say when that happens.

This is somehow not an issue for any other business, so they'll figure it out.

> I wonder how the taxes and fees refund works. Fees I can see airlines trying to say “we already paid these”, but taxes are only charged on services rendered, no? Is there a situation where the airlines have already paid sales tax to the local authority and don’t get a refund for canceled service?

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.

Nearly every government handles things like sales taxes quarterly. Each quarter the merchant submits a report to the government showing the sales and the tax collected in the previous quarter and sends that collected tax to the government.

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.

https://www.marketplace.org/2021/07/08/didnt-use-your-airlin...

Sounds complicated.

I don't see vouchers mentioned in the article and the official post is pretty clear that refunds must be in the original form of payment. And automatic.

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-ad...

I once arrived in Paris on the overnight train from Milan, which had been delayed for a couple of hours en route (allowing us to sleep more!). On the platform in Paris, staff were busily and proactively handing out claim forms to disembarking passengers, explaining that they had the right to a refund for the delay.

If only that were the law in the US.

They can offer vouchers but you're entitled to the refund. The problem in that past has been that they weren't obligated to inform you of that right.

Hopefully now that the refund entitlement is automatic, vouchers will only make sense if they can beat the cash offer.

So they left you believing take the voucher or get nothing?

And they'd act like you were imagining things if you said otherwise. It was like:

- (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.

Seems more and more companies are learning how to do customer service from US health insurance. Make people wait, give wrong information and hope they will just go away.

Correct.

They do tell you. What's missing is compensation for waiting or making new arrangements last minute (which is not cheap) unless it's 3 hours delayed. So airlines will drag it out putting fake new flight time up by incrementing 10 minutes at a time, hoping you'll rebook because you don't want to wait out their 3 hours just to find out it's cancelled anyway.

> They do, but they’ll never tell you that. You have to know.

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.

The European legislation is also something of a joke. Most of the time the airlines just ignore them unless you sue. I recently won a case against American Airlines for a canceled flight, but it took two years, and lawyers ate half of the money. Just a couple weeks ago KLM canceled my flight and bumped me to Delta, who also canceled my flight, but then washed themselves of liability because Delta isn't an EU carrier (and the flight originated outside of the EU).

I have a friend who had to pester Lufthansa for more than six months before she got her refund for a delayed flight.

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.

If your flight starts or ends in the EU then it doesn’t matter if it’s an EU carrier. It is the flight operator (I.e Delta) that is liable.

That's not true. Read the rule. If it starts outside of the EU, then it's only applicable if the carrier is an EU carrier:

https://www.eccnet.eu/consumer-rights/what-are-my-consumer-r...

Why would you file against Delta if you booked with KLM?

Because the law says that you have to pursue the claim with the flight operator.

yes, so you are pointing out some very fundamental properties of a justice state. no law will ever fix this. obviously you need to have things tried.

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.

I did do a chargeback, because after 2 months of contacting the booking agent requesting a refund, I got nothing.

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.

In the US many merchants will refuse to do business with you again if you do a charge back. Not sure what would happened if you were blackballed and used a different credit card.

They can also refuse to do business with you if you sue them? What is the point?

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.

> 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.

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...

They do the same sort of thing soliciting volunteers to be bumped from a flight for less in vouchers than they'd be entitled to had they been involuntarily removed.

I don't see a problem with that (unless the voucher has ridiculous terms) because it allows someone who doesn't mind being bumped to voluntarily accept it rather than going straight to the "you've been chosen, here's the legally mandated payment."

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.

>I've made out quite well on United

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.

Hmm? The flights originally cost around $700 since it was winter season. So I got paid around $1200 per flight to sit in a lounge with free unlimited food and drinks for 3 hours. Of course would prefer more, but $400/hr to relax in a lounge is a job I'd take! Besides, I could have said no…

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

14 CFR 250.5 calls for an airline to compensate you for involuntarily denied boarding for overbooking (your circumstance) to the tune of 400% of the fare (though this is capped at $1,550) per person, so that's a helpful index to understand what benefit there might be holding out.

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....

I was not involuntarily denied boarding, I was voluntarily denied and in fact lucky to get the offer as multiple people wanted it once it hit that level, since it was an early afternoon flight for which a 3 hour delay again with lounge was quite pleasant.

But only to those who are involuntary bumped. So they look for volunteers who will take less than that first. So far when I have traveled the offer hasn't been enough that I have wanted to give up my spot. But the person above's offer sounds like one I would have considered.

>No, you made out poorly. Wouldn't you prefer to have been paid more?

If you don't volunteer, you're much more likely to stay on the flight and not be paid anything.

Exactly!

He probably wouldn't have been paid anything, someone else would have been chosen at random to be bumped off. This way the burden shifts to whoever it's least inconvenient for.

My wife and I were flying from San Juan with a layover in Atlanta going to Nashville. We gladly volunteered to take a flight that next morning for $1000 a piece + food voucher + hotel.

Which seems fair enough to me. If someone is flexible and wants to accept the airline’s offer, it’s fine for the airline and them to reach a voluntary agreement.

What about if people "refuse to leave voluntarily"?

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...

You get voluntold, and then if you continue to refuse, you get arrested for trespassing/not following instructions of the flight crew.

Stuff like this makes my blood boil. It should be illegal for airlines to overbook flights - full stop. I don't care how much this reduces profits. I don't care how "razor thin" the margins are.

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.

You're going to end up with some level of IDB'd (involuntarily denied boarding) passengers in any world where seats/safety equipment break, equipment changes, crew members get sick and/or time out and airline personnel need to be shuttled to crew another flight that would otherwise be entirely cancelled, or unexpected weather [higher than typical temperatures, unfavorable winds] or airport conditions [runway closures/temporary shortening] preclude a full gross weight takeoff.

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.

https://archive.is/YfLWG

Money moves mountains. There should be an auction for a cash refund to disembark.

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.

From that link, passengers voluntarily taking the airline offers vastly exceeds those involuntarily denied (by a factor of almost 14:1 overall and many of the majors having exactly zero IDBs in that year).

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 disagree. I'm fine with overbooking because it makes travel more efficient, both environmentally and financially. However, the airlines should offer whatever it takes to fix overbooked flights. Some of the passengers will be glad to be 4 hours late when they are compensated with, say, 5000$. This will naturally lead to a proper balance of overbooking.

But for that scenario you normally still get booked on a later flight plus the vouchers, as measly as the value of those might be.

I dunno, most of the time, the offered vouchers have been more than the cost of the flight by a good amount. I haven't had an offer in a while, but the last few times were often starting at around 2x the price I'd paid for the flight for a 2-3 hour delay. I've never seen it be less than $200.

Requiring cash is there in the article, at least now it is.

> 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.

> unless the passenger chooses another form of compensation

This is the bit. How much you wanna bet they’ll find ways to use this to screw people?

Since they now have to automatically offer a cash refund, any alternative voucher offered will have to be substantially higher value to the customer to get any takers.

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.

[flagged]

Grandmas can be quite young, how dare you.

"We can issue you a refund for the cash value, but the system takes 3 years to pay out. You can have a voucher right now though."

"The refunds must be issued within seven days", so (while I wouldn't put it past them to try) telling passengers something so manifestly untrue would be grounds for a lawsuit, which should make them stop.

In Europe they have to refund your ticket plus compensate you in cash depending on delay and distance.

Not sure if this will change much in the USA, refunding is not that high of a cost either for airlines.

Really only works if you live there though. As an American in Europe traveling, they offered me lots of localized forms that only accepted local addresses and banking information for the reimbursements.

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.

> They do, but they’ll never tell you that. You have to know.

I think this is not true

It used to be but this new rule changed that.

I don't think it was true in the past either, unless this is coming down to some subtlety for what counts as a "substantial change" vs "cancelation". But happy to be wrong. I'd like to see a clear and authoritative explanation of what changed, but I haven't seen a link to one in this thread yet.

Still, this is great.

Everyone is going now pay the full, refundable fare rate, so not great if you want cheap tickets.

Same in the EU - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Passengers_Rights_Regula...

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.

In Europe, I’ve always had my parking, taxi, restaurant and hotel reimbursed by the airline in case of delays (such as: bad weather or strike -> we’ll board tomorrow morning -> full reimbursement of all implied expenses).

I thought this was IATA regulations. US travelers are really getting the hard stick herr.

Also in Europe (Frankfurt), when I had missed my flight because the (German) express train had been delayed by more than one hour, the airline sent me to a hotel with all expenses paid by them, including breakfast, until the next morning when I could take another of their flights towards the same destination, though via another route (obviously all being covered by my original payment).

Just a word of caution for anyone booking their own train connection, this is usually only done if you book train and flight on the same ticket. The DB calls this Rail&Fly and essentially the train becomes a leg of the flight. So if/when the DB screws up, your "flight" is delayed and treated just like a delayed plane.

https://www.bahn.de/service/informationen-buchung/bahn-flug/...

I suppose that it may depend on the airline how they handle such cases. I do not remember which I had used then, but it might have been Lufthansa.

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.

When WOW Air closed down, they refunded European tickets but not Americans. We ended up doing a charge back with our credit card. I was a little pissed at first but ended up getting a cheaper flight to a better starting point for our trip to Europe through Air Italy (which coincidentally closed down a year later).

You have to know that, and you have to fight through their customer "service" desk/phone portal to get it. Most people just give up or take the first thing offered to them.

According to some random internet stories that may or may not be true, canceled flights due to a delay that resulted in the destination airport CLOSING before they would have landed, is one such situation that is/was not considerable as a refund.

You are correct, it’s mentioned in the article:

> 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."

Same in Europe. There's standard amounts.

I had a flight cancelled due to COVID in 2020. I was given a voucher, which sat unused. They extended the expiration on it a couple times, due to the pandemic dragging on. Eventually, out of nowhere, after 2+ years of sitting on the voucher, I was issued a refund.

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.

Alaska gave me a 12 month voucher that expired because I had no need to fly with them. I asked about extending it or a cash refund but they refused.

COVID was such a cluster fuck that it could have bankrupted airliners. Under normal circumstances they can afford to refund their passengers.

Companies need to have an incentive to provide a good service.

How did you get your money back? I didn’t get a refund from delta at all…

If I remember correctly, they refunded it to the card I purchased the flight on.

This was through British Airways.

i'm still trying to get mine...

In the context of the pandemic, being a little forgiving is reasonable.

I missed a flight and rebooked for later on the same day. My return flight was still cancelled because how could they know I maintained the trip. There’s no way for them to be unaware that I bought a new one-way ticket. They were just predatory about it.

There are very few consumer experiences as miserable as air travel these days. It’s just a joke.

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.

I've flown some 20 commercial flights in the last year and never faced any of the issues you've described. I find flying quite fun to this day. Perhaps this is highly regional.

A lot of the things I hate about flying are things that other people might well be fine with.

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.

Most of these is why I prefer travelling from B-tier smaller airports. Security queues are usually shorter, there's few to no shops on the other end and you can go from airport entrance to gate in less than 15 minutes if only bringing carry-on, which is not difficult to do with a bit of discipline. It also means you can arrive at the airport an hour - hour and a half before departure. Of course that isn't always an option but I'm lucky that my most common travel route is between a B-tier medium-sized European airport and a tiny airport that sees less than 2 commercial planes a day on average.

Similarly, here in New Zealand any flights with less than 90 seats do not require security screening. On some routes, our airline flies turboprops (ATR 72) and jets (A320) on the same route depending on the demand / time of day. As it's a short flight (~1 hr), the flight-time is similar with either option but by booking on the ATR you can avoid security screening entirely. Paired with generally small airports, this means I can arrive at the airport 20-30 mins before departure.

>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.

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).

3 hours is insane. Where I am they ask for 1 hour before boarding for international flights or if you have checked bags. I have TSA pre-pass, I check in online, and only travel with one carry on bag. As such I generally go through security only a few minutes before boarding starts as, like you, I hate waiting.

+ making you empty your water bottle, and then on some airports there is no option to fill it afterwards (e.g. only hot water available in the toilets and no drinking fountain)

Some carriers are definitely worse than others. I’ve flown about the same as you but over 10 years, and I’ve had OP’s experience once. We were stuck on the runway for 6 hours, given food vouchers that nowhere in the airport would accept, and then 10 hours after we were supposed to take off they told us our flight was cancelled and they’d organise accommodation. Except there was a huge concert on in the the city that day, so there was nowhere nearby. They left us in the airport with a “sorry” and no food.

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.

From my point of view you are really lucky, or you’re always flying the same stable routes.

> Plane not full enough to make a big enough profit?

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.

> I checked Lufthansa's 2023 income report and they made 6m EUR.

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). 

The margins are not that big, yes. But it’s also part of the deal: I buy a ticket to fly somewhere, not for a gamble that on the day of the flight the airline will choose to disrupt my plans and cancel the flight because they’re not making money after all. You can’t have your cake and eat it, it used to be that sometimes they make money sometimes they don’t. Nowadays they cancel flights routinely because they prefer to screw you than sometimes make little or no money on certain flights. They want to win every time now at the traveler’s expense.

> 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).

> I buy a ticket to fly somewhere, not for a gamble that on the day of the flight the airline will choose to disrupt my plans and cancel the flight because they’re not making money after all

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

Which is why regulation is necessary in my opinion.

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.

The regulation is there, not perfect, but you are just a vengeful customer based on your own description, like it or not.

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.

It feels to me like there is a little wiggle room between "perfection" and being treated like cargo. Anyway you do you, to keep things polite.

There are rules though: safety is supposed to be equal. The Ryanair pilots have the same training as those flying for Emirates.

But in terms of quality I'm okay with "you get what you pay for". You don't have to fly low budget.

I think you misunderstood the gp. The problem is you don't know what you pay for. It's pretty much impossible to tell for a normal person in what different ways a flight A and flight B will shaft you to edge out more profit. This doesn't just apply to planes - we are long past where price has anything to do with quality.

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.

Tbf, Turkish Airlines is notoriously bad.

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.

I for one had no idea they were so bad until I had the pleasure to experience flying with them. I now try and warn everyone who will listen to pick any airline but TK.

> Force passenger to check hand luggage in.

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.

> Everybody wants to bring the largest hard sided rolling luggage that could possibly be a carry-on these days.

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.

Those carry on wouldn't have to be so large if.

* 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"

I don’t think this is on the passengers. If checking luggage in wasn’t an extra fee (often), didn’t carry a material risk to have your luggage lost, damaged, late, stolen, and didn’t mean spending an extra 30–60 minutes waiting to collect it then I’d bet a lot more people would check luggage in.

Had a similar experience with Turkish Airlines, and I definitively agree on avoiding planes as much as possible, long-distance trains all the way.

From asking around (I had a loooot of time to waste in IST), TK routinely strands hundreds of people everyday at IST. That’s just how they operate and the treatment we received isn’t unusual.

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.

It's really sad. They used to be a good airline. They went downhill faster than the Turkish Economy.

Too bad that here the trains are even less reliable and often even more expensive than flying.

Train is always more expensive partly because they don't get the tax exemption and cheap fuel airlines get. If airfares were priced the way train is, they'd be a lot more expensive and much less competitive.

Oh please, trains would not even be possible without government exemptions for right of way (and usually a originally fully government funded rail network). For passenger trains the problem is lack of competition, not fuel costs.

> 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.

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.

Customers for economy class seats are very price sensitive - if you were enjoying the experience then the airline wouldn't be cutting the services offered close enough to the bone to offer a competitive price.

You can pay for a slightly better experience, but it's very expensive!

What’s interesting about air travel is that it’s both a bad customer experience and expensive. I’m routinely paying several hundred dollars for a two hour flight that is cramped, delayed, and where passengers are shunted around like chattel.

Usually, when you pay through the nose for something, you at least get treated well.

Is it expensive on an absolute basis or on a relative basis? If getting a metal tube to fly through the air at 500 mph is expensive, then we shouldn't expect that you get a luxury experience just because the ticket price is $200 or whatever.

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

Yeah it's much easier to deal with terrible service when your return ticket with Ryanair doesn't cost more than 20 EUR. In the meantime the cheapest flight I was on in the US still cost $200.

Ryanair don't sell return tickets, they sell you two 'one way' tickets, last I checked.

Don't know if that legally exempts them from refunding both if they had to refund one.

We were 5 people (3 different reservations) traveling from EU to Japan for a ski vacation. Our first flight got canceled due to technical issues with the airplane and we could not get another flight to reach the transfer from Istanbul to Tokyo. We had to get a new flight that delayed our arrival date by 1 day. The worst thing is that they didn't rescheduled our domestic flight from Tokyo to Sapporo.

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.

A 3rd party to deal with the airline on your behalf? Is this a service or an attorney? I'd pay a portion of a refund to handle that mess every time.

JetBlue accepted the reservation for my 14 year old (the minimum age for JetBlue to take a minor as an adult). They were code sharing that flight with American, who requires a minor to be 15.

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.

Yes, as the parent of a 14 year-old currently attending boarding school in Europe, the way that many airlines have in recent years increased their minimum age rules to fly unaccompanied creates huge problems and costs. We've had to become experts in code share logistics because, for example, Swiss Air will happily accept 13 and above but they code share flights with Lufthansa who requires 15. Whether your kid can board the flight depends on which airline's code is used for the flight number, and it's not always clear on the airline's own websites (much less other sites), despite being the same seat on the same plane.

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.

Please clarify something for me, about major US airlines having 15 or 16 age limits.

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.

The condition is that it requires non-stop flights.

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.

When an airline says "unaccompanied minor" they mean "we'll charge you hundreds of dollars to escort your child"; the OP is referring to the age above which that escort is not required.

"Unaccompanied minors" require an escort to and from the gate, so they are only unaccompanied on the flight itself. For truly unaccompanied minors (who do not require an escort), the age limits are as stated above.

The age for a minor to fly alone and without going through the unaccompanied minor process [considerable hassle and expense]. (In other words, to fly as "any other passenger".)

I did a lot of ~12 hour unaccompanied flights when I was 10, to and from school, although I was lucky that the school was close enough to Heathrow that it was only single legs (albeit ~14 hrs).

> 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.

> 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. :-)

United cancelled a very important flight after delaying it several times during the day. They did not provide me any accomodations or new flights, the lady who was talking to us regarding the situation just left saying "access the app to book a new flight" - I kind of understand her position, it was not her fault but she would be the one getting screamed at by rude passengers. Long story short, I paid for my own accomodation, my own dinner and on the other day I was able to go back to the airport and find someone who helped me get another flight.

When I got back to Brazil I took united to the small claims court and got my money back plus some.

Small claims court is the future of airline customer service.

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.

I have a similar experience, where I was originally denied a refund I was entitled to per EU’s passenger’s rights regulation (261/2004) and reported it to the national ombudsman for consumer rights and having them agree to pay up immediately.

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.

I had no idea small claims court could be so productive. Did you write your own petition or did you use a service to help compile it? Do you have to handle giving the receiving party their documents or does the court do that?

Small claims court is slow and laborious for all parties. Airlines have realized it’s better for their bottom line to just settle immediately out of court once they receive a small claims summons.

Would it be legal for an airline to refuse doing business with you after you have claimed your money back once?

Eventually they'll learn how to counter sue and use the full power of their legal team to make an example out of what they regard as "peons with delusions of grandeur".

You laugh, but similar stuff has happened in the context of IP/Patent law. de facto retaliation is real in the legal system

Civil court filing fees to remove the case will cost hundreds. Airlines do not have the margins to sustain that type of campaign.

This is why some places require an actual company representative and not just a contracted lawyer to appear for small claims court. Helps even the scales a bit.

Having used small claims a couple of times I’ve found it easy enough to write the petition. Small claims is designed to be lawyer free. There are gotchas but the judges seem to be more lenient. I’m not a lawyer and don’t have much court experience, but it was really not that hard to research and write. If you’re that interested I’d share the doc with you.

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.

In the UK, I went through the small claims court because my wifes phone stopped working as a phone after just two years and one moth. I just filled it out online here: https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/make-claim

Didn't get as far as court as I went to mediation and got a settlement. Worked out well; would definitely do it again.

Tangential gripe: I recently flew to SFO for a weekend. In both directions I was significantly delayed due to construction on one of the runways limiting the number of planes that could land per hour.

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.

How long in advance was the construction scheduled?

A while - they’ve had the construction on 28L for a few months; now it’s actually construction on Taxiway B, which requires the use of 28L as a taxiway.

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.

Wait. Am I missing something? Isn't that ~90m of car time assuming mild traffic?

I don't think they were flying SFO to SJC, rather they considered rebooking to SJC to avoid the delays at SFO

SJC is so much better. Honestly it's almost worth going to SJC and taking Caltrain despite the extra time and cost just due to how much nicer it is

When SFO is operating on only one of its two runways (common due to low clouds, now due to runway construction) then 3h+ delays are par for the course for flights in the evening.

This is shocking for not currently being the case.

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.

The compliance with this law is anecdotally very poor. Swiss Airlines owes me thousands of Euros for missed connections but they contend that the situations were outside their control (some mechanical issue) and thus they refuse to compensate. I have a 200 long thread email chain spanning years with no progress. You can use services like Airhelp to get a refund but they take a huge commission and I am too stubborn to give in that way. Luckily the statute of limitations on these claims is 6 years so I have enough time to figure out how to make a complaint to the Swiss aviation authority.

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).

I have claimed thousands of euros since 2018(ish) and never had a single issue. I definitely believe that airlines can try to avoid paying it, but I don't think it's as common as you make it out to be.

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 used to fly quite a bit from Schiphol, and booked evening flights as a rule with €80 youth tickets. Now, Schiphol is one of those airports where there are so many flights that delays almost certainly trigger a domino effect and there’s a similar 50/50 delay probability as your Heathrow example in my experience.

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.

Any flight originating from EU territory is subject to this law, regardless where its other legs are.

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.

Do you have the name of the company who helped you? I'm going through something similar right now with Wizz Air.

It was https://www.skycop.com/ but there are quite a lot of those companies if you google them out.

Thank you. The fact that these companies exist is evidence enough of the problem.

Every time it has happened to me the airline paid out quickly without any fuss. Once with KLM the plane broke over Siberia, they flew back and put me on a flight the next day. I got my 600 eur compensation and also the cost of two train tickets for the extra trip between home/airport and they didn't even ask for receipts.

For the longest time Ryanair actually gave me more money than I spent with them on tickets.

Counterpoint, it has happened to me twice, once with Lufthansa and another time with a low cost airline (Vueling). Both times I was paid without fuss. Both times I filed for it myself.

> I have a 200 long thread email chain spanning years with no progress. You can use services like Airhelp to get a refund but they take a huge commission and I am too stubborn to give in that way. Luckily the statute of limitations on these claims is 6 years so I have enough time to figure out how to make a complaint to the Swiss aviation authority.

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.

Anecdata but I went with the process once with Lufthansa (EU internal flight) and once with Delta (flight from EU to US) and in both cases got my 300/600e compensation in a few days via a bank transfer, no questions asked, no 3p company needed. I just sent an email with flight data and my personal data.

Untrue. It's mandatory to have processes in place. I was refunded once by Swiss within 4 days after applying to their online form. I will be refunded by Easyjet within the next week for a flight I took last Tuesday. This law, like the one on carriers roaming, are clear and strong EU successes.

Indeed, if you try to get them to refund you by yourself, they will keep saying that it was out of their control. But I've gotten several refunds over the past years by going through one of several companies who specialize in getting airlines to give refunds. Granted they take a % cut, but you still get most of it without lifting a finger.

Not as easy. Unless they can claim weather related issues or force majeur (bomb threat, security issues etc..) they can't do that. The reason for the plane delay has to be stated on IATA reports and systems. Technical issue is not an exception, for example, even if out of the airline's control. They used to do this more, but they probably realized that the legal cost to sustain systemic lying is not financially viable in the long term. Better to pay out and record a loss.

Swiss Airlines also owed me a bunch of money years ago, but I gave up chasing them. I should have used one of the services that takes 25%. 75% is better than zero!

Financially? mathematically? Yes, certainly. From a principles perspective? it's a lot closer ;)

From a principles perspective, I'd rather the airline be forced to burn the money than get to keep it. Getting to keep a place chunk of it myself seems great.

From a principles perspective, if someone wronged me, I'll burn them down, even if I end up getting zero.

Getting 75% would be a windfall.

Yup, you don't even need to vindicative for this to make sense - it's simple game theory: always make sure that wronging you is more expensive than treating your fairly.

Yeah I'm trying to be more rational about the opportunity cost of my time.

Just to clarify, any flight which originated in the EU for any airline, or any flight coming into the EU operated by a EU airline (important for codesharing the operating airline counts not the issuing). Also the amount of compensation depends on delay and overall length of travel.

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.

The law is very good, but unfortunately in practice it can be much harder to get the compensation.

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.

It's basically internal policy for many airlines to only pay out when an official dispute resolution or small claims court process is started/won.

Did you file a dispute with your payment provider and/or small claims court?

Payment provider ? It was paid with a credit card, I don't think a bank could do anything here.

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.

Yeah, that doesn't work in practice rather frequently.

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.

KLM made it really really hard to get compensated for a few flights that they canceled. Ended up going to a company that exists only to litigate these

Weather accounts for 75% of all airline delays (in the US). That disclaimer is kind of surprising to gloss over.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/22/weather/why-flights-get-c....

Yes, but it's a bit unfair to ding an airline 600 euros per passenger on top of the fare refund because the weather wasn't safe. Fining an airline north of 100k because they didn't take off in unsafe weather would result in an even greater incentive to fly anyway.

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 think there's another side to this. There's weather, and there's "It's winter".

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.

There’s already an incentive with the weather. If have the plane has to be rebooked or refunded that’s lost revenue that stills ends up affecting the bottom line.

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.

> 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.

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.

    > They could keep extra planes and staff around ready to replace an incoming flight if it's delayed

This was the norm a few decades ago. Spare pilots and other aircrew at all airports, even spare aircraft at large hubs.

Compare ticket costs a few decades ago to now.

> 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.

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.

Being forced to refund money may make the airlines force even more planes to fly that are knowingly unsafe.

Yet evidence from the EU says this doesn’t apply.

No offense but airlines in the US do work differently than the EU. I think it's possible for both of us to be right though.

Forcing airlines to compensate passengers for weather delays isn't going to work, and isn't equitable. You'd probably have people purposefully trying to book flights that are liable to be cancelled in order to profit.

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.

If you know the flight will be cancelled why would the airline sell you the ticket?

Did you just contradict yourself? I'm confused.

You can be refunded without receiving additional compensation.

It worked for us a few years ago. Eurowings was late and the plane had to land somewhere else, they got us to the destination airport with buses. Then we got 250 EUR comp.

Europe has had this for years and imo it keeps the airlines pretty good in check

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…)

Fun Fact: Air traffic controller strikes also count as force majeur

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.

The French controllers strike so often it's hardly unexpected (yesterday/today I believe!). But I agree it's largely out of the airlines' control. But it's a well known issue of many years and should be a part of doing business

I would want compensation from the controllers' bosses (French government?)

I feel like airline setting up "one of those services" would still allow to save them money hah

I believe security staff strikes also qualify. I got burned by that one via KLM

So what happens to the concept of "getting what you paid for"? Does KLM just shrug and say sorry? I could imagine if they said "we can't pay for accommodation but we'll send you on the next flight", but did they even do that?

I wasn't anywhere that needed accomodation so I cant speak to that. They canceled the flight and booked for the next day, which meant that I had to miss half the conference and the reason that I was making the trip in the first place.

Ah, that's disappointing that you missed half the event. Glad they at least sent you on another flight.

They also employ what I call the "slow drip"...

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.

Family member and I were flying from America to Germany, having connecting flight to Czech. Our first flight departed few hours later, and during the flight Condor cancelled our connecting flight because we wouldnt have enough time to transfer. We actually sprinted across the airport and made it to an open gate, but our tickets wouldnt work, all while watching people from other flights board normally.

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.

> (despite the flight landing in EU, which is all it takes for EU legislation to apply)

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.

Interesting, didn’t know this. It’s only for arrivals though. For departures it’s both eu and non-eu

Nevertheless a weird discrepancy.

If anything this causes the airlines to be extra cynical and try their hardest to keep the delay within the 3h window. Whatever it takes not to be liable.

The exemptions are the first hurdle. Airlines are getting sick of compensation and often won’t pay until the day before the court date. And in some countries you must follow a procedure and depend on government officials, but they may ghost you for a year (maybe in cahoots or legitimately backlogged)

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.

Wait wait wait. Requires airlines to refund? Not to compensate, but to give you your money back? What did they do before?!

You have long been entitled to a refund for canceled flights. The new rules regard “substantial delays”.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/money-flight-cance...

Vouchers or tell you that they are not required by law to compensate you, like United told me. (United would have owed me at least five refunds under the new rules)

How is it possible that you pay me to provide a service, I don't provide the service, and just keep your money? This sounds outrageous.

They would book you on another flight. They wouldn't necessarily compensate you for the delayed/canceled flight.

What if I don't want/can't make the other flight? If I book a hotel for the 20th, and they overbooked and can only give me a room on the 25th, they don't get to keep my money even if I don't want the 25th.

Right, that's where they should refund you, and now they would be required to.

Before, I think it was a matter where once the airlines had your cash, they were loathe to give it back.

The analogy isn’t really fair. Honestly, getting the date right on a hotel stay is often more important than getting it right on a flight. Both are an inconvenience, and a good chance that both are major, but really…it’s different. If I get back from my holiday or business trip a day late, it sucks, but it’s workable. If I get to my hotel, they tell me they oversold, but not to worry they’ll fit me in tomorrow…well, I still need somewhere to stay.

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.

Cancelled/delayed flights can mess with visa/immigration, mess with events (imagine being the speaker to a conference/doing a tour and then not being able to show up because your flight was delayed or cancelled), and even hotel rooms (some places will void your reservation if you don't show up). Also if you get stuck in an area for an extra day it's effectively the same as having gotten the date wrong on a hotel. I've gotten screwed due to a soccer playoff in the EU once happening the same weekend I was supposed to crash at a friend's place

IDK, they both suck.

I don't see it that way. Most of my travel (and what I assume is true for the majority) is that they are traveling to a location because of an event, be it work or personal. If I am delayed a day, then there is no longer any reason to travel, because I've missed the meeting or event. Every time this has occurred it is quite problematic.

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.

Rebooking onto another flight is often going to be the most economical option, since flights tend to be a lot more expensive on/near the date of travel.

Yes, when regulations don’t protect consumers, the outcome is generally considered ridiculous.

the problem is republicans don't like consumer rights, they like business rights. it's like the age old US vs EU difference of "freedom TO" vs "freedom FROM", or positive vs negative freedoms.

If you're a big company that's effectively business as usual.

its part of the carraige agreement you "sign" when you buy a ticket

shitty voucher system

Vouchers are fine but Airlines should be forced to pay 200% in vouchers or 100% cash and the choice should be very clear to the customer.

Wow

Often they would provide you vouchers or something that were attached to some confirmation number that was never listed anywhere.

>Requires airlines to refund?

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.

Are you not interpreting the "and they do not accept alternative transportation or travel credits offered" clause to mean that the customers have a choice to take the refund?

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’m reading the sentence you quote and I don’t understand how you’re arriving at that understanding.

If my flight is cancelled I’m entitled to a refund if I refuse any other compensatory measures?

> The rules come after the agency handed Southwest Airlines a record $140 million fine for its operational meltdown during the 2022 holiday travel season.

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.

Refund?? What someone paid for their ticket is not relevant. To be made whole someone needs to be given the current market value of their flight.

If I purchased a ticket for $399 but a comparable ticket now costs $799, I can't buy a new ticket with that refund.

If you choose a refund that would be because you opted not to take the flight at all. Assuming it was your outbound flight, that can be reasonable. If it's a return or connecting flight you might have to re-route, in which case a refund might not cover your alternative. This sort of thing really needs a lot of interpretive guidelines. E.g. the EC 261 guidelines are excellent in clarifying this.

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.

They already offer to rebook you. Refund is for the cases where you don't want the flight at all.

They only offer to rebook you on a flight in their own fleet though. E.g. i have been canceled on united due to “bad weather” halfway through a segment and was made to wait 4 days until the next united flight (there was a huge backlog). Instead, since i was stranded and absolutely needed to get to my destination, i had to buy a delta flight leaving that same night for $700 more than market value. United refused to compensate me for this. It’s bullshit.

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.

If you complain hard enough and get lucky you can get rebooked on a different airline, but it's certainly consistent or mandated. I think I've only had it once as someone who flies quite a bit.

A lot better than what was happening before, which is issuing airline specific expiring vouchers

For reference, here is what Europe has been doing for a few years: mandatory refund plus distance-based compensation.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

If you depart from anywhere in the EU you always have this.

Ah, the family seating fee. I once paid close to $3k to reserve ajacent seats for my family on a 3 leg round trip. Prices varied from $80 to $200 per seat, in addition to the ticket. Was traveling with kids, wanted to make sure we were all together.

Then I started testing, and guess what? you end up together regardless. So fear based sales.

They should set a minimum seat pitch of 32" for shorthaul flights and 34" for medium and longhaul flights.

Economy has to be uncomfortable to upsell to premium economy and business. Huge demand for those cabins and massive money makers. There will never be a minimum seat pitch regulation unless directly and obviously related to safety

Just pay up for comfort+ seats if you are in US - they are generally pretty affordable.

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 am living in UK atm where some regulation allows claiming certain amount based on distance and delayed hours. I was entitled to more than flights cost for a delayed Turkish Airlines flight.

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.

Did airhelp talk to aviation ADR do you know? We've Just essentially lost based on what we provided but still think we're owed compensation really. Just absolutely exhausted doing all the admin. Originally went with resolver but they did nothing. I think aviation ADR is our last course of action unless we actually sued them, do you know if you did that?

I dont know whats ADR. All I did was put all relevant details/docs on airhelp. They sent another email when lawyer stepped in and I got email from lawyer too but that's about it.

> 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.

Legal protection is nice, but it can be circumvented, like the Lufthansa fiasco showed: https://svedic.org/travel/screwed-by-lufthansa-german-govern...

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

Selling vouchers where you know some of them will go unused should be straight up illegal. It's fraud imo - taking money without actually providing a service. At the very least they should be automatically refunded after a reasonable time period.

I used to travel weekly for years and if there was a glitch in the system, weather delays, plane maintenance, crew availability, etc it could be very exasperating to get things sorted out.

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.

They'll just do what they already do: change gates 12 times in 5 hours making customers move pointlessly because they don't have a plane or crew.

Neither the title nor the post body makes it clear. Is this limited to USA?

What about airlines in other countries? Like Air Canada from Canada, and Lufthansa from Germany?

> ..., 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.

I had to fight with Lufthansa for a year to get reimbursed for hotels & new tickets.

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.

The big problem with the EU regulations is the lack of consequences when airlines don't follow them. They can just refuse or drag their feet and the worst thing that can happen is a court ordering them to follow the rules they should have followed in the first place. Some rules about treble compensation (or a big compensation if one wasn't due in the first place) if they haven't refunded/paid compensation within, say, 60 days from first contacted would probably help a lot with cutting through the bullshit.

What about delayed flights? My international Lufthansa flight arrived late enough to make me miss my next flight (Air Canada - who then compensated me with a $300 voucher and meal coupon).

I think we all know that airlines overbook, or cancel flights if not enough people are on a flight to make it economically viable.

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)

Two years ago ( after covid ) when the airline booked me on a another flight from London to Barcelona, the rebooked flight got cancelled… they lost my luggage for over a month ( because it was as loaded on the first flight ) the only thing I received was an apology… + 600 euros mandatory refund

People need to be paid multiples of their ticket value on a sliding scale based on length of delay and whether it was overnight. There should still be compensation even if you ultimately fly on that airline.

Well, that seems obvious ? Of course they are? If you've booked a flight at a certain date, it's obviously because you need transportation at that date. If you cannot be transported at the right time, the transportation is in many cases no longer needed. For instance, if I miss a conference, my need for the transportation goes to zero, and so, I should be reimbursed _AT_LEAST_ for the transportation, but I'd argue, also for the conference if that payment has already been made.

My takes:

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.

If your margins are so low that you depend on this, you should quit.

Also, good for the environment.

Not sure I follow your reasoning on 2

2: In the past you might sacrifice 1 flight completely (24h delay) to get 9 flights on time. Now you'd rather make all 10 flights have shorter delays and all stay below some refund threshold.

One issue I have had is where they cancel the domestic final leg of a non-direct international flight. The total ticket cost was $2000, but they valued my cancelled final connection at only $40, yet if I tried to purchase just that flight alone between those two US cities, it would have been more like $400.

4 years later and i'm still trying to get money back from tap portugal from a cancelled covid trip. fuck that company so much.

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.

LOL, we have this in Europe for ages. Where are the EU-haters today?

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.

That flight was 1/8 of your paycheck.

Do you have access to my income report? Let's talk after you get foreclosed because of an ingrown toenail operation.

We're never going to talk because I have access to excellent healthcare. I would bet a pretty penny it's far better than whatever waiting list you have access to. You can convince naive Americans that don't know better but I've experienced British, Hungarian, and Italian healthcare and it's a joke.

Even if that were true, comparing raw pay numbers without accounting for cost of living is a fool's errand.

What about connections? Will they also refund the missed flight + hotel stay? My $100 flight was once delayed and I missed the $700 connecting flight. Airline gave me next day $700 ticket and put me in a hotel. Shall I just receive $100 under that new rule?

Well, assuming you booked this as one ticket (the two were with the same airline) then usually they will refund everything. I assume that isn't changing

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.

Is there something just intrinsically unprofitable about air travel? Why do airlines continue to get shittier and shittier and strive for the bottom of the barrel?

It’s clearly a high demand service. Couldn’t they just provide a good service and make money?

As much as I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, I find it abused by corporate America and no longer do so. Any variation of Hanlon’s razor is assumed and abused strategically anymore. Perhaps there could be fundamental issues that explain away airline issues we see but I just assume it’s an industry that has successfully eroded consumer expectations and rights more than many. It’s not like it’s unique to the airline industry as a trend, it seems to be happening in every industry I interact with. You’re getting less for more and the experience is getting worse overall. Aside from some gains technology wise, people are clawing everywhere and consumers foot the bill with little option outside of simply not participating and using certain products or services.

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.

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/08/airline-mergers-us-airline-...

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.

Sometimes I am so surprised that such a mundane regulation, a basic facility really, is seen as revolutionary in the US and implemented extremely late. I am so happy and lucky to have been born in this corner of the world

It's absurd that we're so hesitant to weaponize regulation against abusive business practices (because money). This should have been fixed decades ago, as it has been in some other countries.

I suppose it should be noted that refundable tickets have been a thing in the US, however, they were/are a lot more expensive than 'regular' tickets.

Still, this is a step in the right direction.

I think refundable tickets that are more expensive mean you can get a refund when you cancel, rather than being about when the airline cancels on you.

Yes, that's what they are.

USA didn't have this rule beforehand? confused in EU

Always remember that USA simply does not care about consumers. It is all about shareholder and stock market values. From slavery to any type of safety.

And yet I get better customer service from US companies than European companies. Funny how that works.

That's as vague as it is useless.

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.

It's funny you bring up Air France because that's one of the ones I had in mind that is beyond redemption. Truly awful customer service both on the plane and off.[1] Same with Iberia.[2] Allergic to treating customers like human beings. I fly United for the vast majority of my flights and have had nothing but great experiences even when things go wrong. In fact, gun to my head, I couldn't come up with a similar story with a US airline despite flying US airlines 20:1 compared with European ones.

[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.

Official Transportation release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40146124

Nice. I like the refund more than the vouchers. Good job Biden team: https://apnews.com/article/airlines-junk-fees-baggage-delays...

I guess that in the UK this has been the case for a while?

We just got 1600GBP back from British Airways for a flight delayed by 24hrs.

Probably the EU regulations haven't been removed (yet?).

flight regulation or its cases against canceled fligths is so common in Europe it is the example of automatic law or law tech. https://www.flightright.de/#

Wouldn't this likely just result in increased airfare across the board?

>Buttigieg said the DOT is also protecting airline passengers from being surprised by hidden fees -- a move he estimates will have Americans billions of dollars every year.

I think I am seeing more mis-spellings in news nowadays.

Wait, they weren't required to refund before...?

I wish we could have election year Biden every year.

Anyone from EU/UK will laugh at this news

Why? I'm from the UK and I think this is a good thing. The more that it is normalised that you should get refunds for delays the better. AirTransat cancelled my flight leaving the UK a few years ago and refused to refund it. I pointed out the regulations and they just said they won't refund so I had to do a chargeback. That worked; but it would be good to see airlines build refunds in to their processes.

Of course it is a good thing but nevertheless funny because it is something we take for granted. We are also used to get a compensation on top of the refund.

Btw escalate it to CAA and they will handle this. Not only you will get a refund but the compensation as well

We need more competition in this industry.

I don't see how that would help, given the margins are already so low.

An airline which has decent customer service and who pays out for refunds would have higher ticket prices and noone would use them.

This seems too good to be true?

Good news.

Step in the right direction.

...were they not required to do that before...?

Side note: Wow, ABC News is still on go.com. I worked at Disney from 2006-2015 and most people were baffled about what the heck go.com even was, and why things like ESPN, ABC, and a bunch of other big Disney properties were subdomains of it. It has a history going back to 22 years ago[1] when Disney tried running a portal with a search engine and email hosting. ESPN got off it in 2016, but I'm honestly shocked that ABC news isn't able to. Apparently it boils down to SEO?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go.com

I used go.com all of the time as a kid in the 90s, mostly to test that Internet was up, but they had some games there that were cool

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Would it be fair to say that civilian aviation is in a doom loop at this point? Margins get tight, quality falls, government increases cost of compliance, margins get tighter, quality falls, government saves the consumer again...?

Peter Thiel discusses this same doom loop and some of your points in this lecture that I highly recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k

I wish I had listened to this a long time ago. That starting so niche nobody bothers you is a winning strategy would not have occurred to me. Thanks for sharing!

Wouldn’t the airlines simply hike up fares to price this in? Is there regulation that caps how much flights cost?

What you have right now is a situation where airlines compete stiffly on sticker prices and then find ways to screw you on the backend. You save money if you're lucky, but it's because you're getting a hidden subsidy from people whose flights were cancelled.

This will be used as a pretense to raise airline fares, and won't impact cancellation rates or average delay times.

Rules like these exist in Europe, and flying in Europe is incredibly cheap. For a random weekend in May, I can fly to 26 different countries for under $50 one way.

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.

Airlines don't need a pretense to raise fares. They can, and do, adjust rates all the time to charge people as much as they can get away with. Unlike regulated industries such as insurance or utilities, there's nobody they have to convince to let them raise their fares.

That's not as strong an argument as you think it is.

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 will do daily housekeeping, they just won’t do it automatically. Only if you ask, which I actually prefer.

I don't know why you are nitpicking about this while ignoring the base point I am making.

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.

>We went from a default of "Opt-out" to "Opt-in"

So?

Hardly worth crying about and most of us prefer it this way.

Did you read the context of the conversation or just decide to pick on one line of my comment and make irrelevant replies?

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.

You can get your room cleaned as much as you want, you just need to ask for it sometimes.

Please see my reply to the sibling commen.

That's not necessarily true. Yes, the change to requiring refunds rather than compensation that airlines can weasel out of raises an airline's cost of cancellation, but passing that cost along to their customers makes them less competitive compared to airlines that have better on-time performance. A refund requirement means they can't have their cake (low fares) and eat it too (shitty on-time performance), and there is real financial disincentive to having terrible reliability...or financial incentive to be more reliable.

So if a company is going to be insincere and act in bad faith, we shouldn't ever try to curb bad behavior?

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.

If they could have raised fares they would have already. Why do you think this rule will make a difference?

Because each airlines knows their competitors will lose margin if fares don't go up. The new rules are more expensive. So someone will raise the fares, and the competition won't significantly undercut the pricing change.

All of those things are motivated by the corporate greed of fat, lazy oligopolies.

At least now you can get your money back after your ticket being rendered useless.

The doors of course, will continue to fall off.

That's Boeing, not the airline's fault. Don't let Boeing get off, lay the blame at their feet.

Yes it can raise fares - and that's not some unexpected downside it's just pricing being more transparent.

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.

>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."

"Alternative transportation or travel credits" it will be, they will be useless. Nothing has fundamentally changed.

You already posted this complete misreading of the text you quoted in a different reply. At least read it once if you are going to quote it twice.

If they are "useless," then people won't "accept" them, and per what you quoted they are entitled to a refund.

I think you're reading that backward.

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

huh? all this is saying is that if you accept a rebooked flight, you don't also get a refund.

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.