My flight was canceled a month and 5 days ago. It was to the US and Canada, was canceled 22 hours in advance, and would have been my first time to see my family since the pandemic – more than 3 years.
I spent 3 hours on the phone with the airline trying to find a way to my destination. In the end they offered me nothing. I filed for a refund, and the statutory compensation on the day of my cancellation. I haven't received either. The airline has ignored my dispute filing, and the website where I booked hasn't processed the refund.
A week ago, I filed a chargeback with my credit card. I haven't received any info on that.
Two days ago, I had to spend the time hiring a legal service which processes the statutory EU compensation, but they'll take a third of what I'm due (€600 of the €1800), and say it'll take 2-3 months.
The current system does not work. Even if I do in the end get my refund and compensation, I'll come out roughly break-even on costs, lost my summer vacation, and will be down a dozen hours of effort.
I had to do it with Icelandair, and once I told them I had filed a complaint with the government they started answering emails.
It took like 2 months from start to finish, but I got it.
This still suggests there's a problem - companies can choose to break the law and only start following it when a tiny minority actually reports them to the regulators.
The regulation should be changed so that any regulator involvement regarding the matter implies an immediate and significant penalty, so companies are better off giving out refunds directly than waiting for them to complain to the regulator.
EU FAQs - Air passenger rights - https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
No worries, I did this a few years back and the process took a while but I got the money.
Also, the EU compensation is rather handsome, especially on a long flight like that, you mention 1800 EUR, how much was the ticket originally?
"No worries", that's perhaps fine if you have access to large amounts of cash or credit to fund replacement flights whilst you wait until the airline finally pulls its finger out. And what then if the replacement flights you booked get cancelled at the last minute? Now you're out thousands of euros.
So no, it's not "no worries".
Like a person who has spare $10,000 laying around and a lawyer on retainer can't even fathom how this is a problem.
Maybe you lost $3000 of tickets for a family flight, and booking replacement tickets will costs 2x as much because you are booking short notice.
And maybe if you cant get replacement tickets, now you loose $5,000 of hotel, so now your total losses are 8k.
And if you don't know the law and don't have legslly literste friends, maybe you never get compensation
Also known as poverty premium
In the case of having a money cushion this could be true if you’re born into a wealthy family and have a trust fund. But it’s not the case for someone who has built wealth for themselves. They aren’t “privileged” in this sense. They earned it.
I used to think so untill I encountered:
"You young people don't know what it's like to work hard, I started with nothing and bought a house. You can't buy a house because you spend all your money on Avocado on toast."
Now I realise it's a polite way of saying 'you are an idiot'.
It's a mindset where you don't understand what life is like for the person you are trying to lecture. It doesn't matter if you are hostile or helpfull, it just means you don't understand the relevant problems.
You think avocado is relevant to house purchasing, you design benefits system for homeless people that asks for your address. You asks people how is it a problem that you need to file a lawsuit to get your money back - like who can't file a lawsuit. Or who doesnt have internet?
If you 'self-made' your wealth 20 years ago, you will have forgotten how it was, and times have changed. So it helps, but is not strictly relevant.
If you can get to a public library, you have internet.
Not everything is an intractable problem, though I'll agree that avocado on toast is an unlikely reason to not be able to buy a house (though is a reasonable hyperbole for "bad financial planning", if rather insultingly dismissive).
For example, in the fog of war or the early game we don't know if the enemy is teching, econo-expanding, or rushing. In the mid-game we know an attack is coming, but we're uncertain its unit composition. So in the early game we store some resources while we scout. If we see them teching we can dump everything into military expansion since they'll have neither the army nor the production to counter any attack. Same idea for mid-game: knights -> build pikeman, archers -> build knights.
If it were merely about shock absorption we may as well have dumped it all into walls, archers, and castles.
Of course risk vs reward can still favor replacing parts early or building units / eco.
"though also American Airlines, and I won't get a refund on that" <-- you should double check this, if one of the airports is in the EU you get everything back for your departure flight.
https://realworldmachine.com/travel/airline/eu-flight-compen... "Flights must either arrive into the EU via an EU-headquartered airline or originate from the EU (regardless of airline headquarters) for the EU Flight Compensation Regulation to be applicable."
Obviously they will tell you otherwise.
Funny how people call me privileged etc. but you literally fill out a web form with flight number, upload your tickets and the solicitors handle the rest and the money gets dropped into your account within 6 months or so.
It's a lot of money, of course the Airlines are going to try to wiggle themselves out of it, so you have to fight them to get your right.
I think you will get 2700 EUR back for sure, flight compensation as well and you might even be able to claim for the BnB.
When I don't pay a fine in 14 days it doubles. So institute the same thing with a 30 day SLA and remove any paperwork requirement when the flight is cancelled or delayed by the most excessive amount.
That's even written in the text: "The advantages of a PAYF model for corporate travel managers, as BTN Europe previously reported, include not having to chase refunds or pay a TMC to manage this process. There’s also a reduced risk of losing money to airline bankruptcies."
first world problems ...
A business that rejects customers willing to pay top dollar is suboptimal. The startegy today is to make artificial scarcity. If the customer has more power the strategy changes.
I flew Munich-Oslo yesterday. Look at the prices for that route for later today, for next week and for next month. The seats are the same on most of the aircraft, the available business class you see is just regular seats being kept free for expensive tickets. And when the search engine says "4 seats are left at this price", that means that the airline is keeping some to sell at higher prices.
And even if they're not malicious. A bus company in my country got fined (or, denied millions in subsidies) because they didn't meet their target of bus routes / bus lines (they get subsidies to drive routes that don't pay for themselves). They couldn't get enough bus drivers due to the Panny-D and everything else going on.
Currently if an airline drops you, demanding compensation is a cumbersome process but you can get it. So, e.g., if a flight was booked by too few passengers, the airline has an incentive to still honor the booking.
With this system they might as well say "today numbers don't add up so we just don't fly", and cancel with any excuse.
The airline has a duty to fulfil the contract once it has entered into the contract. That duty applies both before and after the payment due date (or payment dates, in many contract).
For example, phone sales can't be final at that time, there has to be a 14-day grace period starting from when the purchase agreement is accessible to both parties (IIRC). Mail-order vendors have to accept returns on most kinds of goods, by law not by convention. Warranties cannot be shorter than a specified limit. Apartment rental contracts cannot ban having children, and so on and so forth.
The restrictions are real, even if most of a typical contract is still free to design and write by the parties.
This suggested change isn't larger than many of those, or groundbreaking. It's just another one like those.
Yes, I know. I grew up in Germany. That these restrictions are common doesn't make them any better.
Or is this another message from a fantasy universe where customers negotiate contracts with major corporations?
If I don't like the Cheeseburger at McDonald's, I just go eat elsewhere. No need to regulate the taste of cheeseburgers, nor exactly how many pickles or what kind of cheese should be on them.
You'd do the same with airline contracts. And people already do that, for the all the conditions that are not regulated.
Basically every airline offers the same terms, conditions and services. If you want to know what's coming industry-wide in 3 years, just keep an eye on what the most regressive is doing today.
(As a customer, I only care about stuff that actually affects me. Checking what's written in the contracts and official terms-and-conditions is at best a means to an end; especially since I am unlikely to go out and actually sue anyone. Mostly, I'll just avoid airline X, if I hear that other people are having trouble with them.)
BA is a perfect example - a few years ago it was an OK airline, but it has chased the policies of RyanAir (even hiring their CEO!) to the point where they are a complete shit show.
You’re pretending there is a market where consumers have input where no such thing exists.
Honestly this sounds like a point to address in addition?
I'm pretty sure I already give a mailing address to airlines upon booking. You could require airlines to immediately -- say, within 5 business days -- mail a check to all passengers after canceling a flight under the stated conditions, rather than letting them wait until each passenger complains individually. Maybe let passengers elect to either receive a check for $X or a travel voucher for $Y > $X when booking.
That should be easy to prevent. It has to be designed so the airline (i.e. the party that holds all the power in this contractual agreement) cannot cancel the contract, but the customer's money can only be collected the moment the flight touches ground on the destination. Like a reserved amount on a credit card that car rentals use.
Flights are already "connected", it should be easy to auto-bill once the destination has been successfully reached.
If you want to overbook like crazy and bump passengers off the plane, you should be free to try that. It's a free market, and no one is forced to fly with you.
Commercial aviation? Good one. When’s the next bailout?
In any case, have the budget carriers ever gotten a bailout?
If I call up an airline and ask them: what happens when you bump me off, and they say they will find me a new flight immediately.
In practice they often dont wven pick up the phone because they don't have enough staff.
And they get away with this
Those tools are applicable in many situations. Eg when Amazon doesn't send you the stuff they promised. Or when your shoeshop sells you knock-off Prada etc. It's a common problem with standard solutions.
Those standard solutions apply (or should apply) to airlines as well.
Eg when the airline gives you less legroom than they promised etc.
Furthermore, a flight might be cancelled for any number of legitimate reasons (weather, strike, technical problems, crew limitations, change in government rules, etc.). A flight is not like a car trip (even though the aviation industry has been so spectacularly successful in delivering safe and reliable flights that people often forget that).
It is foolish, in my view, to rely on making any given flight.
Right now if your EU flight is cancelled you're entitled to a monetary compensation[1] on top getting your ticket money back. I worry that letting the airlines simply not charge you will allow them to wiggle out of this, or make the process to get it even more Byzantine than it already is.
[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...