Capt. Wilson L. Dos Santos is stationed in Iraq, but last month he clicked on Priceline to buy a ticket for his mother to fly from Boston to Fort Myers, Fla. When he realized he’d booked the wrong airport — he should have sent her to Tampa, instead — he tried to cancel the first ticket and bought a second one.
CHANGE
Award tickets are not free. Victoria Casey knew that when she made plans to fly to Europe on US Airways this summer. Each reservation cost her $50, in addition to the 320,000 miles she spent for four first-class tickets.
Here’s a question I get often: The name on my ticket doesn’t match the name on my ID. What now?
Helen Teresa Roberts believes it did when she flew from Rome to Newark this summer. After Flight 43 was canceled, Continental Airlines offered her overnight accommodations and 660 euros, in accordance with EU 261, the European Union’s consumer protection law for air travelers.
What if you got an email like this?
United Airlines and US Airways lead the pack, according to the Transportation Department, charging their customers $78 million and $66 million, respectively. (The figures on the chart are for the first quarter of 2009, and are in millions.)
To those of you who say airlines don’t have a heart and who think they never bend a rule for a customer in need, let me introduce Teresa Stewart. She was on a cruise vacation recently when tragedy struck, and she needed to reschedule her Continental Airlines flight.
Desperate airlines do desperate things. For example, Midwest Airlines, which is downsizing itself out of existence, has apparently decided to bend one of the most basic rules of modern airline travel.
Paying extra for a better seat, a meal, or to offset higher fuel costs — we get that. But other airline fees make absolutely no sense. Here are the top five.
