My problem is not the cash back for my ticket, it’s everything I lose when I rebook last second afterwards.
It probably would have been worth specifying this is for the USA, since not everyone lives in the USA.
Good. So that abolishes the stupid insurance upsell bullshit.
But 168 of my fellow passengers have protected their flights today!
No, that doesn’t end until idiots stop agreeing to it when offered…which won’t happen any time soon.
The complete rules are here: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/refundsfinalruleapril2024
The meat of it is the table on pages 9-14 and mostly comprehensible.
Worth noting:
- A change to your flight number is always a “cancellation” and you may choose to accept a refund
- The expectation is most people would not, for the same reason most don’t cancel their refundable tickets - they want to go on the flight
- There are no carve outs for weather, etc.
- I am really glad to see this because airlines could claim “weather” for connecting flights, so any weather anywhere meant they could delay your flight
Yeah, the weather note is huge. Historically, airlines would just cite “weather” because there was a single cloud in the sky halfway to the destination. Because if a cancellation was weather related, they didn’t have to pay out.
I basically see this as the government going “look, we tried to be nice and give you some leeway. But you abused that by citing weather for every single cancellation. So now you’re on a tight leash and can’t even cite it when it’s valid.”
- A change to your flight number is always a “cancellation” and you may choose to accept a refund
I rarely fly but last time I did, it was the most chaotic mess I’ve ever seen. None of the airline employees knew what was going on when they canceled my layover flight 5 minutes before boarding. The way it was handled was a joke and downright insulting.
Please name and shame the airline.
It was American Airlines but I’m not sure any other airline is better. I rarely fly but I was not impressed with the “oh well, shit happens” attitude they had. They did get me on another flight a few hours later. No apology, no compensation, not even a fuck you. I was still in the customer service line of 600+ people after a few hours because 3 flights were canceled at the same time. While in line I got a text message saying my flight was rebooked and leaving in 15 minutes in a completely different terminal so I got out of line and ran to catch the flight.
I’ve only had this experience flying American, and I’ve had it in some way shape or form every time I’ve flown American.
I now only fly Alaskan. I had an issue one time. I was immediately given miles, a full travel credit, and an upgrade on the flight I was moved to. Also, no hidden bullshit.
On the plus side, the US is catching up to the rest of the world. But as happened in the EU when they did the same thing, prices did go up. Not only to cover these expenses, but limiting routes and canceling city pairs because the liability is too high.
For a real world example, one such city pair I fly between often is generally an hour or so delayed every time. The air space is near 100% capacity so you can’t just squeeze in an extra takeoff and landing. The winds are often hurricane level from many directions. Snow in May and June and August happens. Daily hail storms. Daily downpours and thunderstorms. This is normal for a mountainous town. There are 20 flights a day, but they are all whenever and all delayed. Sometimes when the weather clears in the afternoon, the 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm flights all leave at the same time because it’s a break.
This compensation rule makes that flight impossible. In the future my bet is there will be 3 scheduled flights a day when there won’t be weather issues as likely. Huge number of seats dropped. Ticket prices way up. This will happen everywhere just like it did in Europe.
Someone somewhere has to pay for your constant complaining. And it won’t be the airlines themselves. It will be you with ticket prices.
Maybe they should build some trains that don’t rely on good weather.
I would have been eligible for so many refunds in the past if this rule had been in place earlier 🥲
Same, fucking delta offered my us $90 refund per ticket for a $400 flight that was cancelled…and then wanted us to rebook it for the next week…i just wanted my damn money back.
They’ll just pass the savings on to you.
Even if demand was perfectly inelastic and the burden was paid entirely by the consumer… I’d still rather get what I paid for than leave it up to chance.
They’ll just put their prices up to cover this wont they?
They were going to do that anyways.
Yes. It’s still the right thing to do.
Cheaper nonrefundable tickets should be banned also.
Feels like the flight industry hasn’t recovered since COVID. This is a welcome change however
They haven’t lowered prices, that’s for sure.
Very interesting that it didn’t in the US, because it did in the EU.
