They’ll just put their prices up to cover this wont they?
They were going to do that anyways.
These are difficult times
Not unprecedented?
New Normal
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.”
Oh man this is that high fucking quality type of discussion I’m here for, direct link, exact quote , clearly separated but very based opinion
Have an upvote king
- A change to your flight number is always a “cancellation” and you may choose to accept a refund
Good. So that abolishes the stupid insurance upsell bullshit.
But 168 of my fellow passengers have protected their flights today!
Feels like the flight industry hasn’t recovered since COVID. This is a welcome change however
Very interesting that it didn’t in the US, because it did in the EU.
They’ll just pass the savings on to you.
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.
It would be good if we could find a way to distinguish between weather or airspace delays vs airline operation delays… Like we currently do with existing rules.
Do you have economic data to show that the EU rules caused, or likely caused, the price increases?
Yes you can find many articles about EU261.
But the airlines have adapted by now. Many of the short haul routes became unprofitable because 1 delay worth of compensation was almost 300% total profit for that flight. Meaning if you had 1 delay, you had to fly 3 more planes to just break even. Many routes were adjusted to trains and buses.
Also because of the timeline, when you fly a European carrier you’ll notice they just cancel the entire flight right before 24hrs notice period if they think there’ll be issues. Anyone who flies often knows flying through Europe with European carriers is a crapshoot for multiday delays. Flying through the US is a crapshoot for multi hour to multiday delays.
And yes I fly around the world 10x times in a slow year. I’m very much aware of how the routes, carriers, and laws work globally. It’s easy to see the differences after decades of being engulfed in it.
Any evidence that this actually happened in Europe?
Yes you can looking many research articles and papers written about EU261
Google Scholared it. Nothing on the first page. Link or it didn’t happen.
Maybe they should build some trains that don’t rely on good weather.
I agree. But usually you build the infrastructure replacement before exploding the current solution.
That would require planning ahead. We don’t think about the future.
I wonder if there’s not some caveat that either is in the rule or that can be added to select flights like this flight from the depths of frozen hell to which you’re referring. I fly out of Newark Airport, and shits generally just fine, but you can still see delays an cancellations due to weather. I’ve flown many times out of Denver and have had weather cancellations when there’s nothing but blue skies.
I think it’d be totally fair to be able to select routes, like this one, and add some sort of caveat saying hey, this route is notorious for being difficult, and so we don’t have airlines forcing flights up and down for the sake of avoiding having to refund people, and at the risk of personal safety, this route may have loosened conditions or whatever.
As for losing flights in general, I think it’s honestly for the best. Will flying get more expensive? Yep, and it sucks. Might it force the airline industry in general to adapt somehow? I certainly hope so. The standards for flying in the US have truly bottomed out.
And it’s a bit tangential, but if this forces some airlines into failure, I hope we just let them fail, no repeats on bailout bullshit.
As of now, there’s no exception for that except if it is an act of god type event like a named storm. Hurricane, no payout. Denver random Thursday blizzard? Payout.
The US has no high speed rail, flying is the only way around.
