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No Compassion on Northwest
The Travel Troubleshooter · October 11, 2002

Q: On March 15 I reserved a flight on Northwest Airlines to visit my father in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. I cancelled my flight scheduled for April 16 because I had surgery for cancer and was still in too much pain to travel.

I was told that I could not reuse the ticket unless I paid a $100 change fee. I learned this only after the sutures were removed and I felt well enough to travel. I didn't plan to have a biopsy, cancer diagnosis or surgery when I made the initial reservation, and I am certain the airline must make exceptions to their rules for medical emergencies.

I've written to Northwest Airlines and provided them with a doctor's note. But they refuse to waive the $100 fee. Can you help me?

-- Susan Niefeld

A: Northwest Airlines apparently thinks it's doing you a favor by not making you buy a new ticket. But waive the $100? Forget it.

Let me explain. In an effort to make more money, airlines like Northwest quietly changed their unwritten policies on refunds and exchanges about a year ago. Before the airline industry fell on hard times, ticket agents typically waived change fees for almost any reason, including medical emergencies, having a flat tire on the way to the airport, or just flirting with them on the phone.

The new unwritten policy, which virtually eliminated a gate agent's ability to waive a fee, this summer became an official policy commonly called "no waivers, no favors." Airlines also added another onerous restriction to nonrefundable tickets, a rule dubbed "use it or lose it." Basically, it means that if you don't use your ticket before your flight leaves, it becomes worthless. And you have to buy another one.

So if you had made your travel plans later in the year, you would have lost your entire ticket. Northwest believes it's being nice to you.

"It is our policy to treat all passengers in an equitable manner and remain fair to passengers with similar requests," says Kristi Sherman, a customer relations supervisor at Northwest. "For this reason, an exception to our company guidelines would not be made."

But anyone outside the airline industry reading this knows how completely deluded Northwest is. Throwing the book in the face of a cancer patient isn't just bad business, it is morally wrong. The airline ought to be ashamed of itself for its lack of compassion.

Northwest isn't the only carrier taking a hard-line approach to waiving its rules for medical emergencies. During the last month, I've also heard from other readers who were denied waivers for medical problems or legitimate personal emergencies. That kind of mindless adherence to an inflexible policy is probably going to cost these airlines more money in the long term than it will save them in the short term.

What you should have done: Nothing. You didn't know you were going to have a cancer diagnosis. You had every intention of making that flight. If this had happened a year ago, you request wouldn't even be an issue.

What Northwest should have done: It's unbending policy on waivers is foolish. Exceptions must be made for special circumstances. I don't know of any passenger who would fault an airline for allowing a woman who has just had a cancer operation to reschedule a flight without paying a $100 penalty. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the Northwest customers reading this column will be outraged by the airline's pigheadedness.

The fix: Try flying one of the smaller, no-frills airlines. You can get to South Florida on AirTran or America West from Minneapolis. America West just this week announced that it wouldn't follow the other major carriers on their ridiculous new ticketing policies. The other option, sadly, is to buy an unrestricted round-trip ticket. But under the current pricing structure, such a ticket would cost more than if you bought two non-refundable tickets.

Christopher Elliott is National Geographic Traveler's ombudsman. This column appears weekly on this site.