[Infowarrior] - Flight Chaos Shows Passengers Have Few Rights

[Richard Forno]

April 16, 2008
Practical Traveler
Flight Chaos Shows Passengers Have Few Rights
By MICHELLE HIGGINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/travel/16prac.html

American Airlines cancels more than 3,000 flights because of maintenance
issues. Too bad. Skybus Airlines goes bankrupt and shuts down. Find another
way to get to Ohio. You¹re trapped on a tarmac for 10 hours ‹ sit tight.

The state of air travel in the United States has perhaps never been worse,
with the Federal Aviation Administration inspection crackdown causing
extensive flight cancellations, rising fuel costs driving airlines out of
business, and runway congestion sending waves of delays rippling throughout
airports across the country.

While there¹s no question that these are tough times for the airline
industry, it is the paying passengers who are feeling the effects. Indeed,
the recent spate of flight cancellations and a series of low-cost airline
shutdowns have caused many travelers to face a frustrating reality: airline
passengers have virtually no rights.

³In the airline industry, the passenger is left holding the bag,² said Dean
Headley, an associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University and
co-author of a recent report critical of the airlines.

Mr. Headley speaks from personal experience. After announcing the findings
of the report in Washington earlier this month, he took off on an American
Airlines flight bound for Wichita via Dallas. But when the plane landed in
Dallas, the passengers found out that all of American¹s continuing flights
to Wichita had been abruptly canceled after the airline was forced to ground
and reinspect its fleet of MD-80 jetliners to make sure a wiring bundle in
the wheel wells was stowed properly.

After a long delay and much back-and-forth with various American booking
agents, Mr. Headley was able to secure a flight out of Dallas to Tulsa ‹ a
three-hour drive from his hometown ‹ that evening. After plunking down
nearly $100 for a rental car, he was able to make it back to Wichita by
about 2:30 a.m. ‹ roughly seven hours late. His bags, however, didn¹t arrive
until two days later.

³Passengers on airlines are treated differently than other service
customers,² he said. ³Most customers have an opportunity to be face to face
with a bona fide representative or the company itself. In the airline
business, passengers are left to talk to gate agents or ticket counter
employees. If they ever do get their complaint to higher levels, there is
such an elaborate level of forms and letters and wait and wait. It¹s one of
the few pure customer businesses where the customer has very little
connection with someone who can do something about their situation.²

Passengers are entitled to a refund by law ‹ even for a nonrefundable ticket
‹ if they decide to cancel a trip because of a flight cancellation or
significant nonweather-related change, like a delay of more than a day or a
change from nonstop service to a flight with a stop. But with airplanes
packed to near capacity these days, good luck finding an open seat on
another flight for your family of four when chaos breaks out at the airport.

³Each airline has its own policies about what it will do for delayed
passengers waiting at the airport; there are no federal requirements,²
according to ³Fly-Rights: A Consumer Guide to Air Travel² from the
Department of Transportation. After American grounded its MD-80s last week,
some of its passengers were forced to wait as many as three days for a new
flight before a seat became available.

American issued an apology to its customers via e-mail for the thousands of
flight cancellations, noting that it was providing meals, hotels and ground
transportation for dislocated customers as well as vouchers for future
travel for those stranded overnight.

While it¹s often in such extreme circumstances that the issue of passenger
rights comes up, the fact is that airline passenger protections have slowly
been eroding over the years. For example, after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, Congress required competing airlines to charge passengers
who had tickets on a failed airline only $25 for a one-way replacement
ticket. (The fee was later raised to $50.) But as travelers holding tickets
on suddenly defunct carriers like Aloha Airgroup, ATA Airlines and Skybus
Airlines recently found out, that safeguard, along with a law that gave
passengers 60 days to ride standby at $50 each way, disappeared in 2006
after Congress let the requirement expire.

The plight of passengers was acknowledged by a federal appellate court in
Manhattan three weeks ago, when ruling on a passenger bill of rights that
would require airlines to provide food, water and bathrooms for passengers
stuck in a grounded aircraft for more than three hours ‹ as many were last
February when JetBlue Airways parked planes for up to 10 hours during an ice
storm. The court struck down a New York State law, noting that, ³Although
the goals of the P.B.R. are laudable and the circumstances motivating its
enactment deplorable, only the federal government has the authority to enact
such a law.²

Meanwhile, a similar bill introduced at the federal level was passed by the
Senate Commerce Committee as part of the F.A.A.¹s budget reauthorization in
May of last year. But the bill has been languishing for nearly a year now as
the Senate cannot move forward on the legislation until the Finance and
Commerce committees resolve the funding issues in the reauthorization.

Ironically, some airlines are now trying to make money from passenger
concerns about flight delays and cancellations.

Air Canada just introduced a new travel assistance service called On My Way.
For $50 or $70 round trip, depending on the length of the flight, travelers
get around-the-clock access to a dedicated group of specially trained Air
Canada customer service agents who promise to rebook you on the first
available flight on Air Canada or any other airline.

The move highlights how the basic services offered by airlines to stranded
passengers often fall short. In the regulated era, most airlines agreed to
transfer a traveler of a canceled flight to another airline provided it
could get the traveler to his or her destination sooner. This became known
as the Rule 240 transfer. Today, each airline spells out its customer
service commitments, including how it handles canceled flights, in a
³contract of carriage.² A few carriers will transfer a passenger of a
canceled flight to another airline if they don¹t come up with another
alternative within a specific amount of time. Others are less explicit.

Delta, which labels its policy about flight delays and cancellations as Rule
240, states that it will transfer a passenger to another airline ³at our
sole discretion.² American says it will consider doing so only if it cannot
provide a seat on one of its own flights, but doesn¹t specify a time limit
for finding passengers a seat.

³They try to couch most everything in a way that gives them an out,² said
Paul Hudson, executive director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, a
nonprofit air passenger advocacy group, which helped defend the passenger
bill of rights. ³And that¹s part of the reason we need a real bill of rights
for passengers.²

Perhaps the sheer customer neglect demonstrated by airlines could be
forgiven if flights were on time, planes were impeccably clean, and bags
were rarely lost. But the quality of overall airline service is the worst
it¹s ever been, according to the annual Airline Quality Rating survey
co-authored by Mr. Headley of Wichita State and Brent Bowen of the
University of Nebraska at Omaha.

The results of the latest survey, which is based on 2007 statistics from the
Department of Transportation, were not shocking to anyone who has flown on a
plane in the past year. More passengers were bumped off overcrowded planes,
more bags were lost, fewer flights arrived on time and more travelers
complained than in the previous year, the survey found. The researchers gave
the industry a negative 2.16 overall quality score ‹ the lowest in the
nearly two decades they¹ve been studying the airlines.

Carriers say they do everything possible to take care of their customers at
a time when their resources are being stretched to their limits by high fuel
prices and other competitive pressures. ³One of our primary missions right
now, in the midst of this, is to make sure our customers are confident in
our handling of this event,² Mark Mitchell, American¹s managing director of
customer experience, said of the airline¹s recent flight cancellations. To
win back customer loyalty, he added, American is offering a $500 travel
voucher to customers who were inconvenienced in mid-journey with an
overnight stay due to the cancellations.

After customers were trapped on grounded planes during a February 2007
storm, JetBlue created its own ³customer bill of rights² and promised to
compensate passengers stuck onboard a grounded flight before it takes off
for more than three hours with travel vouchers.

For its part, the Department of Transportation also has formed a task force
to come up with its own recommendations on how airlines should deal with
planes stranded on the tarmac. It also has announced a new rule-making
proposal to increase passenger rights and protections, including doubling
the compensation for passengers who have reserved seats but are bumped from
flights.

For now, however, passengers are mostly left to fend for themselves when the
airlines let them down. The Department of Transportation is urging customers
who paid by credit cards for tickets on now defunct carriers like Skybus and
ATA Airlines to file a claim with their credit card company.

To minimize financial losses, more travelers are considering travel
insurance that typically provides reimbursement for accommodations and
expenses incurred because of covered travel delays as well as
around-the-clock emergency travel hotlines for finding alternative
transportation, help rebooking flights or making hotel and rental car
reservations.

Using an experienced travel agent can often help customers bypass long lines
at the airport when chaos ensues and come up with an alternative when
flights are canceled.

George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, recommends buying a backup
ticket that is fully refundable, if you can afford it. ³If your discounted
American flight takes off, great: just get a refund on the United fare,² he
recently posted on his blog. ³But if American is a no go, you¹ll get to your
event on time.²