New Department of Transportation rules, slated to take effect around Halloween, have strengthened your rights when airlines cancel or significantly delay flights. What you need to know about the current and forthcoming rules…
Currently when an airline cancels a flight, passengers typically are rebooked on that airline’s next available flight to the destination. Passengers can accept or reject the replacement flight. Those who reject it usually are offered vouchers or credits for future travel on the same airline.
But there are other options—you can request a ticket on a different replacement flight…or demand a refund rather than a credit. Passengers whose flights are cancelled have a right to a prompt refund even if their tickets are nonrefundable basic economy tickets and even if the cancellation was due to something outside the airline’s control, such as bad weather. Airlines often fail to mention this and have been known to drag their feet when it comes to issuing refunds.
Under the new rules, if a passenger on a cancelled flight does not wish to be booked on a future flight, a refund must be issued within seven days if the ticket was purchased with a credit card or within 20 days if it was purchased with another form of payment, such as airline miles.
The current and forthcoming rules for significantly delayed flights are similar to those for cancelled flights, but the new rules will standardize one key aspect—how long a flight must be delayed before consumer protections go into effect. Currently each airline sets its own policies for this, but under the new rules, a “significant delay” will be defined as three hours or more for domestic flights…six hours or more for international flights.
Airlines also might provide meal and/or travel vouchers when cancellations or delays exceed three hours…and hotel accommodations when there’s an overnight wait, plus ground transportation to those hotels. But these things typically are offered only when a delay or cancellation is due to circumstances within the airline’s control, not for weather-related delays. The new rules don’t change this. To see which compensations US-based airlines offer, see the Department of Transportation’s Airline Cancellation and Delay Dashboard (go to www.transportation.gov/airconsumer, and click the “Flight Delays & Cancellations” link).
The new rules also attempt to require greater transparency with airline “junk fees”—added charges such as checked-bag fees and change fees would have to be disclosed along with the initial fare listing. Airlines are suing to prevent this component of the new rules, and it remains unclear if and when this will take effect.
