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.
> 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Buttigieg reiterated that refund requirements are already the standard for airlines, but the new DOT rules hold the airlines to account and makes sure passengers get the "refunds that are owed to them."
I 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.
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.
