In the United States, we’re currently seeing airlines pressure the Trump administration to eliminate regulations, and instead, allow airlines to self-police.
Continue reading: When Airlines Sell Tickets, They Promise Consumers Very Little
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Hmm. I'm not persuaded that this issue is unique to airlines. For example, if you buy a Kindle book, you're buying a content license, and Amazon can literally take the book away from your account, and you're not entitled to anything. Ditto Google Play, etc.
With that said, the question becomes "where is the balance"? Part of the problem is that it's really easy to put in place "protections" that sound good on paper, but are prohibitively expensive or just flat out don't work.
But it does seem like delay / cancellation / downgrade compensation is reasonable. It'd be one thing if all fares were refundable until, say, a week in advance. As it is, though, passengers have to commit, and if the airline has an issue, they can just shrug and not really be penalized.
Now, with all THAT said, I've gotten extra compensation for every long delay or cancellation in the last few years, and I haven't even had to ask. (Mostly AS, and once B6.)
"BuT rEgUlAtIoN LeAdS tO hIgHeR tIcKeT pRiCeS!! We WaNt To Be ScReWeD bY tHe 'FrEe MaRkEt!!!' WAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"
-RWNJs Everywhere
You are delayed by weather going to the airport and arrive 15 minutes after boarding you are on your own: no flight, no reimbursement of your ticket, no help, nothing. YOUR FAULT. The plane is delayed 3 hours by weather on the tarmac and you miss connections, appointments, hotel bookings, etc, and the airline owns you nothing and gives you nothing. NOT THEIR FAULT. There is no industry in the United States as one-sided as commercial aviation.
For those with access to the Aussie TV show Optics, there's a great episode of the PR firm interacting with an airline client about what they really sell. I believe it is episode 3.
and with dynamic pricing, the last segment or return leg of the flight could be worth very little. They could be refund you just a couple of dollars
To add to Ben's hypothetical example, which I posted in an earlier thread. I was flying on AA points from ATL to Vancouver for a cruise in 2019. My flight out of ATL, in circumstances nearly identical to another AA cancellation for a Japan trip the year prior, was cancelled at 12:30AM about 8 hours before departure. AA automatically rebooked me, but due to the dearth of flights they operate out of ATL the soonest they could get me and my family to Vancouver was 8 hours after our originally scheduled arrival. We were hopping on a cruise ship the next day, so if I hadn't had the foresight to arrive a day early we would have missed the boat.
The airlines are not interested in providing good service. They don't care what fixed plans you might have that get screwed by their cancellations and refusal to rebook you on another airline. All that matters is their bottom line. Absent government regulation to change that cost calculation, they'll keep screwing us. They literally have no incentive not to.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. We benefit through miles and frequency of direct flights from large cities. But then complain when things don't go our way due to incompetence and weather which only effects less than 10% of lifetime flights. I get it. If you don't like it, pony up and fly private.
Airlines don't really care about delivery reliable and fair transport services to customers because it's not their core business. Flying passengers is just a side gig and loss leader for their credit card marketing businesses.
A clarification. I refer here to the Aussie situation comedy that premiered early this year.
Republicans are such little bitches for corporations. They are advocating for the interests of huge companies and CEOs over their own. Just stunning!
@Alonzo
I don't think your example is mutually exclusive. Just because some people receive benefits through miles and flight frequency, it doesn't mean other people cannot complain when something's gone wrong due to incompetence or weather.
Besides, people receive miles through credit cards and flights that they (or their employers) pay, it is not given for free, so of course they have the rights to complain if something goes wrong.
Also, where did you get that 10% number? Last time I check it was more.
https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/weather/faq
Regis' example is about unfairness of the aviation industry, where consumers can be held responsible for any mistake they made (being late even due to weather, misspellings of names, dates, routes, etc.), but on the other hand airlines can just *almost but not always* scot-free if they made mistakes (whether due to weather or incorrectly claim some other issues as weather like Ben experienced several weeks ago, not honoring mistake fares, etc.)
An airline contract of carriage in the US doesn’t even guarantee that they will get you to your destination on a plane. It says it will get you from point A to B whenever it can’t and however it can’t. They can get you on a donkey and they will not be breaking their contract of carriage.
In addition to consumer law, airlines will also be liable in tort. It shouldn't be that hard to argue that their refusal to carry the passenger to Athens has caused them damages equalling the difference between the refund and the last-minute price of a ticket on a competitor...unless of course airline lobbying in a jurisdiction has managed to dictate legislation that specifically makes carriers immune to such claims, just as US airlines have managed to undermine centuries' worth of contract law in legislating the error fare exemption.
Anyone who has taken Econ 101 can tell you that you need a perfect market for deregulation to work well, and in real life there is no such thing as a perfect market. Good regulations should correct market distortions and in this case consumer protections do just that, correcting for what is essentially anti-competitive behavior by the airlines
Exactly that. Some people love to be airline apologists but they will literally not allow ANY mishap for most passengers under most ticket rules, and yet we have to feel sorry for airlines when they screw up. It's a total one way street.
Stupid analogy, as always.
So if I'm flying between small cities on a carrier with no FFP, that airline will be liable and accountable for weather?
Cake your arse.
There's some truth to that but it's an over-generalization. The unfortunate truth is there are no hard and fast rules to the relationship between policies and a good market. The market went on a tear in the early 80s when interest rates were above 10% and Reagan was threatening to deregulate everything. The world has gone nuts for US treasuries when the government has just skyrocketed the deficit and spewed out notes. I could go on, but market distortions are just that. The underlying picture remains consistent and clear and nice-to-haves aren't going to rock the boat the way those in support of regulation (and I am one) think they will.
You might want to look into corporate donations for the DNC and Democrat candidates up and down the ballot. Not to mention corporate cronyism in political consulting for the Dems. I suggest the cover story from the August issue of Harper's. This is a naive perspective at best.
Except there are specific protections for the industry under Federal law that make most tort claims invalid. If you don’t believe me give it a shot (and good luck getting an attorney willing to handle the case u less you agree to pay their fees).
That’s exactly the problem. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 immunized airlines from any state law claims relating to rates, routes, and services. That would include all state consumer protection laws. The very law that deregulated the airlines made it unnecessary for airlines to compete on the terms of their contracts of carriage. You can’t sue them. Only the Federal Government can regulate them.
I've given up on American domestic carriers -- with the demise of Southwest there really isn't another trustworthy carrier. So when I travel abroad I use a handful of national flag carriers, ones I still regard as trustworthy.
The problem is that deregulation really doesn't work when you have de-facto monopolies. Airline transport like most businesses these days are driven entirely by profit, profit which they'll maximize by attempting to sell the thinnest, meanest, product for the very highest price. Since there's no effective competition (and they have the TSA waiting in the wings to strongarm anyone who dares complain) they're free to use whatever innovative strategies to maximize their yields without any consideration for passenger comfort or convenience. (I reckon most carriers would just ditch the seats and just throw in a couple of bales of straw and a bucket if they thought they could get away with it.)
Anyone besides me recall Rule 240? Back in about 1988, I had a flight interruption on a legacy carrier out of LAS on a business trip home to BDL. The ticket counter agent literally told me to hold on a few minutes and he walked down the line of ticket counters personally speaking with the competition. In no time he came back and rebooked me on another airline. I got home the same evening, no worse for the wear. The halcyon days of air travel, for sure. Probably in a Boeing 727 with a nice dinner service, a cocktail, reasonable legroom, and attentive stewardesses.
So what? Democrats are for consumer protection. Republicans are against consumer protection. What's so hard?
Regulations of the airline industry are the same as rules of a football or basketball game. Regulators are like referees…..if you have too many refs in basketball game or football game, there will be too many fouls or pentlaies called on every play, making the flow of play unplayable. If there are too few refs there will be chaos and disorder because of so many missed calls make the flow of play impossible.
Today. There are simply too many “refs” in the airline industry, which stifles the flow of travel. Yes, there will be some missed calls and there will be some that take advantage of the system - but regulatory overreach does harm travel in preventable ways.
The US airline industry is highly concentrated (much more so than in Asia or Europe) and, when you look at individual airports, some airlines have a share of slots which is close to a monopoly. For example, at EWR, United alone has a 70% share. AMS - KLM (64%); CDG - Air France (53%). LHR - BA (51%).
Economist here! Actually, that is incorrect. What you need for deregulation to work is a non-collusive oligopoly with, say, at least 6 major players - which the USA used to have prior to the wave of mergers which have been waved through by the DoJ over the years. Indeed, most industries are oligopolies but remain sufficiently competitive to not need industry-specific regulation. But it's true that perfect competition does barely exist.
All businesses are driven by profit, though. What constrains their behaviour and the ability to generate supernormal profits is the extent of competition within the industry.
@Retired Gambler, I do believe you, in fact I very much suspected that to be the case!
It looks like it's not the lack of consumer protection regulation that undermines competition in the US market for airline services, but rather the existence of regulation giving traders an unfair advantage in law over consumers.
Unfortunately, however, such a narrative is neither popular with those on the left who think that everything can be fixed with more state intervention nor those on the right who think it's a good thing to encourage large companies to screw over individuals (be they customers, employees, or even third parties).
These people are so far gone that they want their kids to get measles. Do you really think that they want consumer protections? It's a cult, not a government.
Then we, as consumers, should be able to do what we want such as Skip lagging since airlines cannot guarantee or arrival into the final airport.
The airlines agrees to get you from Point A to Point B or offer a refund. Now if you want guaranteed times then airlines will need to go back to the 1960s and 1970s when average load factors were around 50% to 60%. And how might one expect that to occur without raising fares?
No airline will ever be able to offer “guaranteed times” and never will be able to no matter what decade you go back too. This is about the airline trying its hardest to get you where you need to be as soon as they can.
Totally deregulate them. Require airports to take over the airlines gates. They can sell them by time slot and there must be a flight on that slot.
No doubt many Dem politicians have corporate money. But many of these consumer protections were supported by Dems. So what point are you trying to make?
I think part of the problem is that Congresscritters and senior regulators get special treatment. Nobody was going to tell Mike Johnson "Sorry, good luck getting there this week" during Crowdstrike. I suspect most of them have comped Super-Elite status at one or more airlines. Bottom line? If a Congresscritter gets stuck, they're probably getting comped dinner on the airline and given priority for rebooking - up to (in at least one infamous case) allegedly getting a confirmed passenger thrown out of their seat in F.
There's also the fact that most airlines sell travel insurance, so as to outsource this side of things.
Now, if I'm being nasty as an airline I'd consider including formal TI at higher elite levels. But I know as an EXP or Diamond I get better hotel cover from the respective airlines when things go sideways (though DL needs to start re-staffing the lounge help desks...).
Speaking of one-sided contracts… I recently flew on United and checked a car seat for my son. When I picked up the car seat at the destination baggage claim, it was ripped apart and unusable.
I went to the baggage desk to file a claim. The attendant told me that should could file it, but it would be denied because “United’s contract of carriage doesn’t cover car seats.”
And that’s in fact what happened! I filed the claim and submitted it, and it was denied.
United doesn’t dispute that I handed them a functioning car seat in LA and they returned to me an inoperable car seat in Chicago. Instead, they just don’t care and don’t consider it their problem!
The problem will be about the details. Did anyone consider that up to $775 per person is a bit much, for example. Anyway this will lead to more consumers choosing foreign airlines for inbound and outbound flights.
Up to $775 is pretty close to what EU261 requires at its maximum, but EU261 compensation tiers are also based on flight distance, while the US rule would have been based only on time delays. The US also requires much a much longer delay (9 hours instead of 4) to hit the maximum compensation tier. Here's the actual text from the DOT proposal, the 2nd (higher payout) rule option's requirements:
For domestic flights, the Department would require an airline to pay compensation of:
1. $200 to a passenger whose arrival at the final stop of a domestic flight is delayed at least three hours but less than six hours
2. $375 to a passenger whose arrival at the final stop of a domestic flight is delayed at least six hours but less than nine hours
3. $775 to a passenger whose arrival at the final stop of a domestic flight is delayed at least nine hours
For international flights, the Department would require an airline to pay compensation of:
1. $375 to a passenger whose arrival at the final stop of an international flight is delayed at least six hours but less than nine hours
2. $775 to a passenger whose arrival at the final stop of an international flight is delayed at least nine hours