Question: I’m trying to get reimbursed for an extra night at a hotel caused by an airline schedule change, but my travel agency and airline have been giving me the cold shoulder. Here’s what happened to us: My husband and I recently booked a trip from Dallas to Kauai via Phoenix on US Airways. When we arrived in Phoenix, we learned that our scheduled flight had departed for Kauai two hours earlier. Neither the airline nor our travel agent, Cheaptickets.com, had notified us of any flight changes.
The next flight to the islands was three days later. US Airways sent us to Los Angeles that afternoon where we had to get a hotel room until the next flight to Honolulu the following morning. From there, we were on our own. Fortunately, we were able to catch a standby flight to Kauai, and were reunited with our luggage later that night.
We’re trying to get our money back for the night of lodging at the hotel we weren’t able to use, the hotel at Los Angeles International Airport that we had to stay in, plus the toiletries we needed to buy when we were separated from our luggage. I called US Airways, and they blew me off, suggesting that I had gotten what I deserved because I booked my flight through Cheaptickets.com. Can you help us?
— Marlene Kelley, Lake Kiowa, Texas
Answer: Both your online travel agent and your airline should have notified you of the schedule change and offered to rebook your flight. When they failed to do that, they should have covered your expenses — the extra night at the hotel at LAX, the missed night in Hawaii and your incidentals.
But you could have easily prevented this from happening by phoning your airline and agency to confirm your flight. Flight schedules can change, and the systems used to notify passengers are unreliable. In your particular case, you were dealing with an airline that had just completed a merger with America West and was going through an ordeal in trying to merge its computer reservations systems. The news reports should have prompted you to make a precautionary call just to be sure your flight was still running on schedule.
It is highly unusual for an airline to reschedule your flights without trying to rebook a missing connection, and at the very least informing your travel agent about the change. Something obviously went terribly wrong.
When you found out about the flight schedule change in Phoenix, you should have spoken with a supervisor, who could have authorized a hotel voucher and given you permission to buy incidentals, such as toothpaste and shampoo, at US Airways’ expense. Although a connection problem such as this one isn’t specifically addressed in the airline’s contract of carriage — the legal agreement between you and the airline — it’s clear that the airline was responsible for creating this situation, and should have covered your costs.
You shouldn’t have paid for a hotel and assumed that either US Airways or Cheaptickets.com would pay for it. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Travel companies go to considerable lengths to make sure that requests like yours are met with a polite but firm “no” — no matter how legitimate. (Although I think US Airways’ answer that you “got what you deserved” might need some work.)
I contacted both your agency and airline on your behalf. After months of stonewalling you, US Airways agreed to send you $500 worth of flight coupons and Cheaptickets.com issued two $200 vouchers, which more than covers your expenses.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Let me understand this – USAir / America West [who in reality operated the flight from PHX-LIH] sold you a ticket on a flight 001 connecting to flight 002 on day XXX. You appear at the airport, and some numbnuts checks you in, AND – gives you a boarding pass for a flight that left before you were scheduled to arrive in PHX? How did that happen? How did you check in for your flight and not notice – on your boarding passes – that your departure time to LIH was before your scheduled arrival time in PHX?
You ARE partially at fault here. You never engaged your brain. Your first mistake was an assumption that any airline gives a rats tookus about you or your trip. How did you bags make it to Hawaii before you? I am assuming your bags flew from DFW – PHX on the same flight as you. Anyway, you should have paid attention to the details.
USAir should have informed you about the schedule change. They did not. Yet, they let you check in for an itinerary that no longer existed in the format in which they sold it. It is 100% US’s fault for accepting you for carriage in the first instance. US knew or should have known, if their employees were doing THEIR job [we all know that the ticket coounter and check-in employees just shove you to the kiosk even if you actually need help from a human, and refuse to help you until you are rude - but thats a whole 'nuther column] then US’ employees would have noted the problem with the connection. They were the last link in the chain of incompetence that could have stopped your departure from DFW without a connection.
US sold you a ticket from DFW-PHX-LIH. You had a reasonable expectation that if they changed the flights that they would tell you. They failed to do so. Thus, they are solely responsible for reasonable damages arising from that problem.
Vouchers are NOT compensation. They are incentives to get you to throw good maney after bad with a provider of already documented poor service (At least in your case).
While the customer ALWAYS bears at least some blame for their predicament, travel companies in particular US Airways don’t make it easy for the consumer. I hate having the feeling of that I need my lawyer at the ticket counter just to get what I contracted for from travel companies.
Something that might work if you are still disatisfied is filing a consumer complaint with the AZ Attorney General. One of my Colleagues is doing just that over a similar issue with US Airways,
I was succesful in avoiding the voucher trap with a travel company in OR by going to the OR State Attorney General and filing a complaint via the internet. FULL CASH REFUND merely by standing my ground. Do not be bullied by airlines and travel providers. Go for CASH all the time. Settle for vouchers if you have to. Why give the rat bast*rds any more money and in effect reward them with poor performance???
This is not, as the article implies, to be partiallly blamed on the US-AW merger–US alone was quite capable of doing this kind of thing. Several years ago, I was booked on Us to fly ROA-PHL-SAN, with an hour connection in PHL to get between Terminal E and the main terminal–plenty of time. About a month before the trip, US changed their schedule so that I would have had 15 minutes to transfer in PHL, assuming my inbound flight was on time (never a safe assumption with US). Fortunately, my travel agent notified me of the change (although they did not pick up on the clearly inadequate conncection time), and I was able to reschedule BEFORE the middle of my trip.
first of all – cheap tickets is not a travel agent!!!! i am a travel agent with a real office and when we book a ticket for a client the schedule changes come through on our computers from the airline. we then notify our clients. sites on the internet are not travel agents!!! we also print on our itinerary to the client to check their schedule 24 hours before – - in case something is not caught by us, you are then assured of a schedule change because YOU CALLED YOURSELF. IN THIS DAY AN AGE YOU MUST CHECK YOUR SCHEDULE YOURSELF!!!! nobody wants to be responsible any more for their own stuff – - you must be proactive – - it was your fault for not checking the schedule.
Reader Kelley clearly has a problem that is more than semantic if she thinks that Cheaptickets is a travel agency or can be considered her travel agent. I would not even call it an online travel agent. It is a booking engine providing just what its name indicates. Expecting any kind of after the fact customer service from Cheaptickets is pie in the sky.
The Gate/Ticket agent bears responsibility, as does the US Airways IT department for having a system in operation that did not flag the account.
Ms Herron, remind me NEVER to book through your agency as surely we would end up in the judicial system in some way. I find your Blame the Customer attitude very uh Airline like.
The CUSTOMER should ALWAYS check with the provider no matter who it is. Primary reason is incompetence of the travel industry and the attitude of the people in it.
First, if USAirways thinks that CheapTickets.com is a bad place to buy tickets, then they shouldn’t allow their tickets to be sold through that site. The ticket is USAirway’s product, and if it’s sold through a venue that harms its value, then they have an obligation to halt the practice.
That said, I also found Linda Herron’s attitude disturbing. Yes, “in this day and age”, checking on one’s final itinerary is essentially a requirement. On the one hand, she brags about how with a “real” travel agent like herself and her agency, they make sure to notify the traveler about changes; then in the next breath, she blames the customer for not doing what she claims her agency would do for you (and essentially negates the promise that her agency would take responsibility for that sort of snafu). In other words, you’ll pay us a higher price for your ticket, because we now have to charge fees since we don’t get commissions, and for that, we’ll “try” to do certain things like notify you about changes, but if we don’t – well, it’s your fault.
Not to mention, if you aren’t a regular flier (suppose this person is one of those folks who flies maybe once in ten years for really special events?), how would she know what’s required “in this day and age”? Anyone issuing a ticket on behalf of an airline ought to be required to print, in large print on the first page or cover documents, “This flight’s schedule is subject to change. You should reconfirm your flight dates and times 24 to 48 hours before your scheduled departure.”
And no, of course vouchers aren’t reasonable compensation. The ONLY voucher I’d consider accepting is one that provides that it may be applied to the cost of ANY flight, at any cost, booked directly through the airline and/or its website. Any limits (not on that destination, not on that date, not at that fare class) is unacceptable.
When you check in, either online or at the airport, your tickets/boarding passes for your entire trip that day are printed. Call me crazy, but I always assume that the airline will not print a ticket/boarding pass for a connecting flight I can’t make. If they do, well then, it’s THEIR fault, not mine. P.S. I fly more than 150k miles each year.