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Fight for Your Rights
The Travel Critic · December 22, 1998

I get a lot of e-mails from other crabby travelers. They usually don't understand what their rights are - only that they have more rights than the airline or hotel tells them.

They're usually correct. They just need someone to encourage them to take a stand, to make their presence known to the often monolithic and uncaring travel providers.

By way of inspiration, I offer a few success stories from the past year.

A few weeks ago, I got a note from a terminally ill reader who wanted to visit his family in Denver during the holidays. But after he bought the tickets, he discovered a serious scheduling error. Fixing the flight proved impossible. The travel agency put him on hold repeatedly during the next four days until he almost abandoned hope. "This company had charged my credit card and went on with business as usual. I can't even explain the frustration, panic and anger I was experiencing," he wrote.

I called his agency and got the run-around too. Then I called again, asked for a supervisor and explained the situation. Within a couple of hours, the tickets were changed.

It turns out that the agency he booked his tickets through wasn't accredited by the American Society of Travel Agents. Say what you want about retailers, but if you're going to use one, make sure it's certified. Otherwise, the scenario could repeat itself.

Denise Jones, a programmer from Issaquah, Wash., discovered it helps to know the rules. She and her husband, Matt, booked an American Airlines vacation package to Jamaica six months in advance, only to learn that one of their flights had been canceled for no apparent reason, "leaving us with a four-hour layover in Miami."

"I called the airline, and asked if there was an earlier flight," Jones wrote me. "They said yes, one that only had an hour layover. I requested that we be switched to that flight, only to be told that only first class was available, and we would have to pay big bucks to get on board."

I helped Jones find the text of Rule 240, which airline guru Terry Trippler calls the "most misunderstood rule in the airline industry." It says that if there is an alternate flight that will arrive earlier than the alternate offered, you have the right to be confirmed on this flight for free, even if first class is all that's available.

Armed with the facts, Jones called the airline until she got on the flight. Lots of travelers are intimidated by airline reservations staff who insist that their interpretation of a rule is the only correct one, or who claim that a given rule doesn't apply to them.

Denise did the right thing by pushing the point with American and getting what she deserved.

I'm not always completely successful at assisting my readers. The case of Hazel Riemenschneider comes to mind. When I wrote about ways that travelers can snare upgrades, she sent me an e-mail asking for more information.

She was traveling from Malaysia, where she lived, to the United States for her parent's 50th anniversary and needed an upgrade because of a medical condition that made fast access to a restroom imperative. She tried using all of my tactics, but neither KLM nor the Malaysian carrier would bump her to business class. She did, however, manage to snag an aisle seat on one leg, which she reports, "gave me ample leg room, so I was not uncomfortable and had easy access to the bathrooms."

Then disaster struck. On the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, "I got stuck in the middle seat of five, in between two couples from Amsterdam, with a language barrier on top of it." At one point during the 12½-hour flight, she broke down in tears from exhaustion, frustration and dehydration. "I made up my mind that next time I will become a pest if I have to get good service," she says.

Sorry you had a rotten flight, Hazel. But you've got the right idea. If you want service, you can't expect it these days. You have to make your presence known.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.