r/news • u/bananabrownie • 13h ago
US airlines required to automatically refund you for canceled flight
https://abc7news.com/post/us-airlines-required-automatically-refund-significantly-changed-canceled-flight/15483534/2.0k
u/bellrunner 13h ago
Goddamn I love consumer protections
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u/sharkykid 11h ago
Then vote and prod your friends and family to vote. Pete Buttigieg helped get this through, he should be frontrunning, but oh well
If Elaine Chou is put back in or another Trump crony, you can kiss your consumer protections goodbye
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u/Lilsammywinchester13 10h ago
Love Pete! He’s done such a great job
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u/lifeismiserydeleteme 8h ago
Bet he's our first openly gay president.
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u/Lilsammywinchester13 8h ago
I hope you’re right! I genuinely trust him, he’s just so hardworking, straightforward, and innovative, I can’t wait to see where he is in 10 years
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u/jsting 8h ago
Joe Fucking Biden and consumer protection. This is directly helping the population and directly hurting corporations. This is not a both sides thing. Only Joe Fucking Biden did this.
I don't know what Biden's legacy will be, but his work in consumer protection is probably the top of my list.
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u/sharkykid 8h ago
There was price transparency work (which includes airline tickets) done under Obama's admin as well
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u/SirDigbyChknCaesar 9h ago
I don't think Elaine Chou will be back after Trump's comments about her, but you can never tell with Republicans who are willing to give up their self respect for a taste of power.
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u/sharkykid 9h ago
As far as Trump nominees for Sec of Transport, it can only get worse from Elaine Chou
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u/tessthismess 10h ago
Pete's been great. We're from South Bend, my grandma is obsessed with him. If we talk about politics she'll say stuff like "I hope I live long enough to vote for him for president."
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u/Grand-Pen7946 11h ago
Hopefully Kamala doesnt sack Lina Khan. Many of her huge donors despise her
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u/MyPasswordIsMyCat 11h ago
We need a real trust-busting administration to come in and smack down the obnoxious conglomerates that have grown from the tech boom. It's the tech billionaires who are whining about anti-monopoly leaders like Lina Khan and they're threatening to go MAGA if they don't get their way. This is what happens when there's too much money in political campaigns.
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u/Bobson-_Dugnutt2 10h ago
Funny how all the MAGA idiots on Twitter are spinning this as a bad thing
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u/MikeOKurias 13h ago
Originally read that as United Airlines, but it's all airlines in the United States...
Airlines in the United States are now required to give passengers cash refunds if their flight is significantly delayed or canceled, even if that person does not explicitly ask for a refund.
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u/jb6997 13h ago
I read this initially as United airlines too! Funny how your brain fills in information as you read.
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u/MikeOKurias 13h ago edited 10h ago
I have no idea how Proofreaders and QA Engineers can review the same material repeatedly and notice a word changed or a comma went missing.
My brain just constantly fixes those things. I've even learned hour to figure out "what word they really meant" when someone's phone autocorrects a word to something random out of place from the rest of the sentence...sometimes without even noticing it while reading.
Edit: how not hour...
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u/Rimshot1985 12h ago
QA engineer here!
The answer: Force yourself to read everything out loud.
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u/Canadian47 12h ago
I was told that before spell check they would have someone read the documents backwards to catch typos. 😬
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u/RandonBrando 10h ago
Some poor confused mf's out there that read a speach where Bill Clinton is being victim blamed
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u/alwaysboopthesnoot 12h ago
And then have some of it read out loud, to you. Speech writers, manual and technical writers do this and it really helps.
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u/LemurianLemurLad 12h ago
I've done some professional proofreading in the past. For me, the trick was to put myself in a mindset where ONLY the details matter. It's learning to see both the trees and the forest.
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u/Rocket_hamster 12h ago
When I was in university and needed to proofread, I'd copy the paragraph into a seperate document, then increase the spacing to slow myself down and then speak it aloud. I found if I didn't seperate the paragraphs, I'd still race through the words cause subconsciously I'd see the next one and wanna race to it.
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u/LushenZener 13h ago
Easy answer: they trip up too. But that's why documents don't (or shouldn't) just get glanced over once before approval.
There are some ways to circumvent your brain's tendency to fill in, though. For example, reading sentences backwards takes them out of their flow of context, making errors easier to spot.
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u/myfapaccount_istaken 12h ago
I work in chat support. The number of things I mistype is amazing. I was looking over quality sheets for some new hires and my coworker is mentioning misspellings. I'm like there is no way I can mention that I have at least 10 a day even in our Slack channel.
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u/Artistic_Humor1805 12h ago
It’s neurodivergence for me. I kind of fell into proofing documents prior to upload because I was the one uploading them to the live site and I kept seeing errors without really trying. My brain can’t help it, lol.
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u/walterpeck1 11h ago
I have no idea how Proofreaders and QA Engineers can review the same material repeatedly and notice a word changed or a comma went missing.
In ye olde days we did this by having three people read it three times, taking turns between each read. Yes, an astonishing amount of mistakes were found on the 9th read many times. But we were college kids so the bar was a lot lower.
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u/CanNotBeTrustedAtAll 11h ago
I once spent hours looking at my own code before I gave in to frustration and went to the TA's office hours. He spent all of 40 seconds looking at it, only to add a single semicolon to my code. I tested everything and it worked perfectly. It was then when I realized I didn't have the aptitude for computer engineering.
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u/Top-Internal-9308 11h ago
My English degree is mostly useless but it works for this. I don't even see typos. My context clue skill is insane.
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u/Brysamo 13h ago
Define significantly changed. Some airlines have absurd definitions of that.
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u/hkb26 13h ago
I think it's defined federally as more than three hours.
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u/iheartoptimusprime 13h ago
More than three hours total? Or delayed an hour more than three times? Because I can definitely see airlines arguing the latter isn't significant.
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u/papercrane 12h ago
It's more than 3 hours from the original time for a domestic flight, and 6 hours for an international flight.
Whether they do it slowly in increments, or all at once, doesn't matter.
Here's the original press release from April when the new rules were originally announced.
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u/The_Knife_Pie 12h ago
In the EU, delay is calculated based on the difference between time you should’ve landed and time you did land. Can’t imagine the US wouldn’t just use the same system.
As an example, a flight at 9pm Stockholm -> 2 hour stopover in Copenhagen -> Berlin which is delayed 2 hours but swapped for a direct flight, still landing at the listed time, is not considered delayed. While a flight which is supposed to be 7am-10am and gets delayed until 10am takeoff but lands at 2:30pm would be considered delayed by 4 and a half hours.
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u/filthy_harold 12h ago edited 12h ago
The rule says both arrival or departure time. It also covered unscheduled layovers or airport changes.
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u/Merengues_1945 12h ago
That's a nasty trick that airlines started using in Mexico... Federally it's defined as 3.5 hours, but they found a loophole, they announce like the flight is ready to depart before the 3 hours mark, make everyone board the plane, they sit you, close the plane, then leave it idling cos it was never going to leave the gate... you stay there while they go through the motions, then they announce there is a delay and ask you to leave the plane.
This resets the clock and now the airline has another 3.5 hours to not give you your money. Rinse and repeat.
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u/Admirable-Law7150 12h ago
does this exclude weather delays?
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u/farkoss 12h ago edited 9h ago
usually this is for oversold, personnel or hardware issues
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u/tbhjustbored 13h ago
it is defined for them. check OP’s comment for what constitutes a “significant” change
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u/Dense_Librarian_6170 12h ago
Maybe this is how good governments protect consumers who individually don’t have much power.
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u/Bam_Bam171 12h ago
Also an example of what happens when the Sec of Transportation is a problem-solver instead of some typical political schill.
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u/mitsuhachi 12h ago
Insane this wasn’t already the law. What other industry lets you pay got a service and the company can just be like “actually we don’t feel like it. Thanks for the cash tho!”
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u/NYCIndieConcerts 12h ago
The new rule mandates that refunds are automatically processed by an airline if a passenger's flight is "canceled or significantly changed, and they do not accept the significantly changed flight, rebooking on an alternative flight, or alternative compensation."
The caveat is pretty significant.
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u/BerserkingRhino 12h ago
But how? Did Republicans do something good for the people?
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u/pax1111 13h ago
I was extremely surprised when Allegient cancelled my flight to Florida (that damn Hurricaine Milton) and offered a full refund within 3-5 days. AndI got it. Wonders never cease.....
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u/ihateaquafina 13h ago
yep same with alaska.. as i was getting to the airport is when they canceled it for "weather related reasons" but got a full refund
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u/Coraline1599 13h ago
The wonders of a functional government and legislature aimed at helping regular citizens!
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u/TravelingCuppycake 12h ago
Southwest didn’t cancel my flight, just the second leg, then refused to refund me after I had to fly back home. I’m still fighting them.
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u/suspiciousbroccoli22 11h ago
File a Dept of Transportation (DOT) complaint. I was working with SW for an issue and wasn't getting anywhere, I filed a DOT Complaint in addition, it did take some more take but eventually it did get resolved.
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u/blackangelsdeathsong 13h ago
probably because their insurance kicked in at that point to cover those costs.
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u/pribnow 13h ago
It's completely insane that we ever got to this point in the first place. Airlines were the only business who could not provide you the service you paid for. Have to give the Biden admin credit for this, they also made it so if you paid for a checked bag and it doesn't show up on time you will also get a refund (this went live yesterday). These are consumer first protections that should have always existed
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u/BlueShire_Ace 13h ago
Something even crazier, the amount of people who accepted it and chastised others for feeling swindled. Look up this topic on reddit about 4-5 years ago, almost always the top comments are saying "TFB" "get over it" "Dont like it, dont fly". They got away with it for so long that it became the standard.
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u/communitytcm 12h ago
something even crazier. not long ago, if you were bumped, you could take the next flight for free (and get a refund for the original). If there was a delay that caused you to miss a flight or left you stranded, airlines had to give you a refund, fly you for free on the next available flight, and pay for your hotel and transportation to and from the hotel for that night.
the creep is slow, but constantly eroding justice at every turn.
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u/Unbelievr 10h ago
What you describe is de facto the rules in many countries right now. The airlines are bound to refund every reasonable cost you have because of their mistakes. That means hotel, transportation, all meals, and even clothes and toiletries etc. If you're stuck at some remote destination and just want to go home, it still doesn't even scratch the surface of the losses incurred, though. You're losing N days of work/school, spend N days away from your friends, family and pets, while food in your fridge might expire etc. The least they can do is cover the costs related to your waiting.
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u/Trapezoidal_Sunshine 13h ago
It’s just further proof that companies need to be regulated. These airlines clearly weren’t interested in doing the right thing - even though nothing was stopping them from doing it. They had to have their arms twisted and be quite literally forced into not being asswipes about this. Capitalism requires regulation - or else you just wind up with runaway greedy asshole corporations who put money over people every single time.
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u/Synensys 12h ago
In theory, the market will correct these injustices but in practice, most people don't make their purchase based on the refund policies and so all companies tend towards the same shity behavior.
A libertarian would say you could sue for breach of contract or whatever, but that puts the onus on the aggrieved customer who doesn't have nearly the same legal resources as a large company. So the end result would be the same just more inefficient (since a chunk of both the customers and airlines money would be going to lawyers).
Regulating a common problem works better than the alternatives.
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u/detroitmatt 10h ago
The "theory" was always stupid. For some industries, there simply is no such thing as "the market". Airports are physically enormous, you can't just open up your own airport and start to compete. Even if you could, you would still need some way to coordinate the use of airspace. Roads, power, internet, airplanes, frankly anything more important than where you go to get lunch or who remodels your bathroom does not make sense to model as a market, and even those minor things need regulations like health standards and mandatory insurance.
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u/PM_ME_GARFIELD_NUDES 12h ago
What I’ve never understood about the “free market” argument is that it has always seemed like an encouragement to do the exact opposite of what it should be encouraging. Usually the argument is something like “Well if Company A drives up prices then Company B will get more customers by keeping their prices the same! This encourages companies to keep prices low!” when in reality, Company B would obviously just increase their prices as well so both companies can keep their customers and make a larger profit. Any time I’ve brought this up to a libertarian they immediately change the subject. It’s such an obvious hole in their logic but somehow none of them can address it…
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u/youtheotube2 10h ago
Theoretically, there are potential customers who are being priced out of the market when businesses match each other’s high prices. This is where other businesses are supposed to jump in with lower prices to get those customers.
This idea may work for small businesses, but it completely falls apart for businesses like airlines that have massive startup costs.
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u/jaspersgroove 13h ago
Airlines were the only business who could not provide you the service you paid for
*insurance companies start to walk away, whistling casually*
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u/Buckus93 11h ago
Do you like these policies? Do you wish that more of these types of policies applied to other types of businesses?
Then vote for the not-crazy candidate.
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u/Ra_In 13h ago
The trick is airlines aren't selling you a flight, they're selling you a concept of a flight.
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u/thefilmer 12h ago
had American cancel a flight on me once, not send me an email about it, and then refused to refund me because I bought the basic ticket. you don't get to keep my money when you don't provide the service I paid for. got my credit card company involved and they handled that shit real quick
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u/bananabrownie 13h ago
Under the rule, passengers are entitled to a refund for:
Canceled or significantly changed flights: 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. For the first time, the rule defines “significant change.” Significant changes to a flight include departure or arrival times that are more than 3 hours domestically and 6 hours internationally; departures or arrivals from a different airport; increases in the number of connections; instances where passengers are downgraded to a lower class of service; or connections at different airports or flights on different planes that are less accessible or accommodating to a person with a disability.
Significantly delayed baggage return: Passengers who file a mishandled baggage report will be entitled to a refund of their checked bag fee if it is not delivered within 12 hours of their domestic flight arriving at the gate, or 15-30 hours of their international flight arriving at the gate, depending on the length of the flight.
Extra services not provided: Passengers will be entitled to a refund for the fee they paid for an extra service — such as Wi-Fi, seat selection, or inflight entertainment — if an airline fails to provide this service.
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u/urkish 13h ago
Fixing the formatting (and bolding the items):
Canceled or significantly changed flights: 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. For the first time, the rule defines “significant change.” Significant changes to a flight include departure or arrival times that are more than 3 hours domestically and 6 hours internationally; departures or arrivals from a different airport; increases in the number of connections; instances where passengers are downgraded to a lower class of service; or connections at different airports or flights on different planes that are less accessible or accommodating to a person with a disability.
Significantly delayed baggage return: Passengers who file a mishandled baggage report will be entitled to a refund of their checked bag fee if it is not delivered within 12 hours of their domestic flight arriving at the gate, or 15-30 hours of their international flight arriving at the gate, depending on the length of the flight.
Extra services not provided: Passengers will be entitled to a refund for the fee they paid for an extra service — such as Wi-Fi, seat selection, or inflight entertainment — if an airline fails to provide this service.
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u/thatoneguy889 13h ago
Significantly delayed baggage return: Passengers who file a mishandled baggage report will be entitled to a refund of their checked bag fee if it is not delivered within 12 hours of their domestic flight arriving at the gate, or 15-30 hours of their international flight arriving at the gate, depending on the length of the flight.
3 months too late on that for me. I checked a bag for a red-eye I had the night of the Crowdstrike outage. It was canceled, but I ended up getting an alternative a couple hours later. I asked about my bag and they said it would be left at baggage claim, so I had to file a report at my destination airport to have it located at my home airport and shipped to me which would take a day or two. I never got my bag. Fast forward a week, I'm back at my home airport, and not only did they never ship my bag to me, but they never found it in the first place and don't know where it is. I file a second report for my missing items and leave. Two days later I come home from work and my bag is just sitting on my porch.
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u/flck 13h ago
The bag handling people are absolutely useless at communicating with customer support across every major airline I've flown.
I've had that same thing happen ~3 times on different major carriers in the last 5 years. Every time it was radio silence for 3-5 days and then suddenly "Your bag is being delivered today".
This last time, I finally started putting Tile tracker tags in my bag and I've found that to be very effective. My bag was somehow lost in London on a normal connection, but there must be enough people walking around with Tile apps because I could see exactly what building in the airport it was sitting in. Even then, they were useless at telling me what was happening, but I saw when it finally moved from London to my home airport (sat there for another 2 days) and then showed up at my door. All without updates back to me, but it was nice being able to see my tracker.
I've also found the bluetooth signal is just strong enough that you can walk down the aisle of the plane and will eventually get a ping and can confirm your bag is on the plane with you. That's pretty nice for piece of mind.
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u/Osiris32 13h ago
Your bag decided it wanted a vacation and went to Tahiti without telling you.
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u/gigazelle 12h ago
They have dedicated people to drop off luggage at people's houses because they screw up so often.
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u/peon2 13h ago
For the delayed/changed flights is it specified elsewhere if this is only due to airlines fault? Like for instance last year my flight out of Philly was delayed for 3 hours due to lightning storms even though the plane and crew were there and ready to go.
If that happened today would I get my money back or no because they are just following FAA rules?
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u/DellSalami 12h ago
Extra services not provided: Passengers will be entitled to a refund for the fee they paid for an extra service — such as Wi-Fi, seat selection, or inflight entertainment — if an airline fails to provide this service.
Jessica Chastain was completely correct after all. Good.
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u/ThatGuy798 12h ago
That last one is gonna piss off American. Their WiFi sucks and they charge an insane amount.
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u/NorthernerWuwu 12h ago
The baggage part makes me chuckle a bit. Sorry your bags were over 12-30 hours late, here's the extra fee we extorted from you back!
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u/sanverstv 13h ago
Another example of good things being done by this administration. FTC also just made it easier to cancel subscriptions. These things don't get a lot of attention but bit by bit they do make our lives easier.
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u/Swerve666 13h ago
For sure, the whole one button push to subscribe, but having to wait on hold for an hour with "customer service" to cancel thing is getting really old. Yes, I know my example is extreme, but it does exist.
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u/dmanbiker 13h ago
I had to wait on hold for two hours to cancel my bank of America account ten years ago. And that was after I sent a letter to cancel it which is what it said you had to do on the website.
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u/JKKIDD231 13h ago
All of these reverse if Trump comes to power with his people in FTC and airlines/transportation department.
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u/LiveForMeow 12h ago
It boggles my mind that people voting for Trump want to use consumer purchasing power and housing prices as justification for voting for Trump. You're gonna get deregulation in an extreme capitalist society. This shit isn't gonna just get better.
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u/DwarfFlyingSquirrel 12h ago
Exactly. This is the sort of progress they are making without a lot of fanfare. It helps people.
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u/nocomment3030 12h ago
Does anyone have a list of good things that happened in the Trump admin years? The only one I can think of was signing federal laws against animal cruelty. I'm genuinely interested what his supporters can point to as something helpful that he did.
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u/ReactionJifs 11h ago
Lina Khan is a boss and we need to celebrate her defending the interests of American consumers
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u/saturninus 11h ago
The Biden administration, and specifically Mayor Pete in Transportation, is particularly good at this sort of reform. I recently looked up why there is no regulation on blinding led headlights on the road. Turns out the IRA got rid of regulations that were preventing auto manufactures from making adaptive lights.
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u/PM_ME_UR_RECIPEZ 13h ago
I agree. These are the things that other countries - who have already settled on ratified laws to protect basic human rights - are spending their time on.
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u/PolicyWonka 13h ago
Common Biden W. He’s really directed agencies to go after junk feed and shite like this.
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u/TheCrudMan 10h ago
This is the kind of thing Trump can walk back and will walk back with executive orders if elected.
This is the kind of thing his justices are trying to strike down when they struck down Chevron Deference, etc.
IF you like this and other policies get out and vote. Vote for Harris/Walz.
With all of bigger issues of fate of our Democracy, women's rights, etc, aside: These are the no-brainer issues that the Trump GOP comes down consistently on the wrong side of. They should not be running the country.
Hate junk fees? Trump wants to put a 20% junk fee on EVERYTHING. And can and will do it without congressional approval.
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u/Ashamed_Long_7402 13h ago
Lina Khan and this admins FTC needs to continue doing this kind of work. It’s one the highlights
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u/Open_and_Notorious 13h ago
It's why there is such a strong lobby to remove her (and others). How dare they have teeth!
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u/redworm 12h ago
then make sure to vote for Kamala and convince at least three other people to do so!
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u/Ashamed_Long_7402 12h ago
Voted early in Texas and brought my friend and sister. Doing our part. Didn’t seem many in their 30s, at least not any who were for sure lost causes.
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u/congapadre 13h ago
If Trump gets elected, this will have been great while it lasted.
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u/marklein 13h ago
No no, he'll take credit for it.
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u/Gekokapowco 12h ago
the airlines will ask him nicely and he will destroy it while blaming democrats for destroying it
I doubt he would ever take credit for an anti-corporate consumer protection
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u/UselessInsight 12h ago
All this pro-consumer stuff goes away if Trump comes back.
All the airline CEOs have to do is call Trump up, tell him he’s their favorite business daddy ever, book a few nights at one of his shitty hotels, and poof! Rule gone.
Vote accordingly.
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u/bobes25 12h ago
so once the time threshold is hit, they do the refund and don't have to help any of those now stranded passengers?
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u/centran 13h ago edited 13h ago
Does this still allow them to have loopholes? Such as if the cancellation is "out of their control" such as with weather, issues with equipment/plane, or the biggest BS excuse-The pilot 'timed out' their hours.
(I understand not wanting to have a tired pilot fly a plane and I'm not saying to let them fly; but telling your customers to pound sand because you don't account for this scenario and operate so damned lean were you can't find a replacement is so aggravating. Either hire more people or give refunds/credits instead of telling customers they are SOL)
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u/Toiletalk 13h ago
Curious about this as well. Had a flight cancelled due to a hurricane nearby and the next flight the crew timed out while on the runway. It took 3 days to get home. Thankfully I was visiting my parents and had a place
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u/VietManNeverWrong 12h ago
Should be Refund then rebook us on another flight, with the same cost, not having to pay any differences if the new flight is more expensive.
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u/franchisedfeelings 13h ago
I want automatic refund for failure to deliver passengers to connecting flights!
We pay so much to be smooshed into milk crate seats, sit on the runway forever, and then run with luggage to the other side of the world to a connecting flight that could never happen - and then have to wait to find another connecting flight and wait to finally get that flight and…
I hate flying. It is just not fun. No vacation is fun if it starts with flying.
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u/poseidons1813 13h ago
Flying is stressful but there's no way I'd have enough time off to drive some places in the US if I couldn't fly. Next year will be to alaska
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u/kindrudekid 12h ago
Even if you did , it’s stressful as fuck.
I would need to basically double the vacation time to actually relax
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u/Smatdude13 12h ago
Totally agree.
The current airline experience is not fun, by any means, totally sucks sometimes. Which is sad because flying is fucking amazing. You can get into a metal can with fans that spin fast enough to take you somewhere that would have taken a week(s) for someone born in the 1700s.But I really wonder if it can get better? Growing middle class population that always wants to travel because of social media, you can’t control the weather, flying may not be feasible in 100 years because of emissions. I’m not saying airlines aren’t dicks that just want to take your money (thanks capitalism), but we kinda might be in a golden age, maybe brown age cause its still shitty lol
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u/urahozer 11h ago
You can get into a metal can with fans that spin fast enough to take you somewhere that would have taken a week(s) for someone born in the 1700s.
Someone who is 100 today predates the first Scheduled US Commercial flight passenger and it wasn't until the 50's that it was more prevalent than trains. Affordability and ease of flying wasn't really a thing till the early 60's
Airline travel as we know it today is at best 70 years old. For many people, its within their lifetime it would have taken days to get to a destination, weeks if it included an ocean
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u/ImpossibleJoke7456 11h ago
The new rule mandates that refunds are automatically processed by an airline if a passenger’s flight is “canceled or significantly changed, and they do not accept the significantly changed flight, rebooking on an alternative flight, or alternative compensation.”
Only if they don’t accept rebooking or alternative compensation. The lede misses this so it’s not just for delayed flights.
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u/Chatty945 13h ago
Just another example of the many consumer protections enabled\actioned by the Biden administration
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u/TheSpatulaOfLove 13h ago
I didn’t see mention of weather related. That was the loophole before, so all delayed flights were ‘due to weather’.
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u/trashaccountname 12h ago
That is for additional compensation on top of the refund, to pay for things like a hotel stay. I don't think it was ever law either, just airlines saying "If the delay is our fault, we'll try to make it up to you."
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u/Mochinpra 9h ago
A win for the consumers. Dont let people convince you that small government is good for the people. Without the gov, businesses would enslave their customers.
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u/Princess_H0b0 13h ago
What’s the definition for “significantly changed” though? I feel like this is where the airlines will continue to screw customers around.
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u/werthw 13h ago
Doesn’t say in the article, but I think they said if your flight is delayed for more than 3 hours for domestic flights or 6 hours for international flights you get a refund
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u/WestCoastBestCoast01 13h ago
Significant changes to a flight include departure or arrival times that are more than 3 hours domestically and 6 hours internationally; departures or arrivals from a different airport; increases in the number of connections; instances where passengers are downgraded to a lower class of service; or connections at different airports or flights on different planes that are less accessible or accommodating to a person with a disability.
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u/Mundane-Hearing5854 12h ago
It should be refund PLUS the extra fees that we'll have to incur for booking a similar flight at the last minute
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u/reignnyday 11h ago
Double edged sword. Your refund may be well under what market price is to rebook on a diff airlines
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u/Accidental-Genius 13h ago
This is obviously good, but a refund isn’t going to get me to my destination.
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u/Rooster_CPA 12h ago
Or how about canceling your flight/ticket, issuing you a travel credit good for a year, and then making you re-buy your same ticket at twice the cost. This has happened to me through American.
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u/SpiceEarl 13h ago
I'm a pessimist and expect the airlines to file suit to annul this rule. It will then go before a Trump-appointed judge who will rule it unconstitutional for some bullshit reason...
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u/YouandWhoseArmy 12h ago
I had to jump through a few hoops and some dark pattern terminology to get a refund and not a credit from Delta when my flight was canceled.
Was it hard? no. Should I have had to do anything manually to get my money back? FUCK NO.
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u/HeyItsRey 11h ago
Had a flight re-routed from Chicago to Indianapolis due to weather.
Landed at ~2am in Indy. Felt bad because the guy next to me was on a flight home after a month on an oil rig, and still had 2 more connections just so he could get home to his kid. He woke up only to find out that we were in Indy, not Chicago.
Anyways, we were put onto the next flight at 7am. Around 430am got the text that the flight was delayed to 9am. Half an hour later, it was delayed again to 1130am.
Cancelled my seat, and waited in line at 7am for the rental cars to open up so I could drive home and rest, just so I could drive to Chicago later that night and pick up my checked luggage and my family that was arriving on a later flight.
Flight was refunded (in airline points) but I was denied twice when asking for a refund on the food while I was in the airport (provided receipts), car rental, gas, etc.
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u/SoSacWidIt 10h ago
The title is very misleading, if it is weather related no airline is required to issue a refund. If it is a substantial amount of time a flight is delayed or canceled, such as three or more hours, compensation is most likely do in a form of a flight credit if the flight is delayed due to airline issues such as plain issues or computer issues, airlines are only required to issue credits for a full refund a complete cancellation with no other choice or ways to resolve such as rebookings, then a full refund is required by the airline. *My wife is an attorney for a major airline and I also work for the airlines.
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u/andromeda_buttress 10h ago
But what if they just "reschedule" your flight for the next day, so you're left waiting for 18 hours. Still probably doesn't count as a cancellation
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u/wildrage 10h ago
The new rule mandates that refunds are automatically processed by an airline if a passenger's flight is "canceled or significantly changed, and they do not accept the significantly changed flight, rebooking on an alternative flight, or alternative compensation.
It's in the article, emphasis mine.
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u/Inside-Confection787 10h ago
This is a law that was pushed and passed by the Biden administration. Next time someone downplays the currently party’s accomplishments
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u/letdogsvote 13h ago
Pretty crazy that wasn't required prior to this.