EXPEDIA

Cartoon of a weary couple driving a car down a straight desert highway lined with cactuses at sunset, as an airplane flies overhead.

American Airlines delayed my flight, so I drove. Why can’t I get a refund?

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Michael Damarino and his wife thought they had done everything right. They booked refundable American Airlines tickets through Expedia from Boston to Tucson by way of Phoenix, paying extra for the flexibility. Then a 90-minute delay in Phoenix, blamed on a sick first officer and a baggage weight problem, made them miss their connection. With no later flights available, they did the resourceful thing: they rented a car and drove the final 100 miles so they would not lose their vacation. What they did not realize is that solving the airline’s problem themselves had quietly turned them into a “no-show” for that last leg. In the airline’s system, skipping a flight without canceling it first triggers a clause that can cancel the rest of your itinerary and wipe out the ticket’s value, even when you paid for a refundable fare. American offered only a flight credit and called the ticket nonrefundable. Expedia pointed back to the airline, and the airline pointed to Expedia.

Cartoon of a shocked couple with rolling suitcases at an airport as a grinning airline agent throws up his arms amid floating dollar signs beneath an Aer Lingus sign.

My airline ticket disappeared. Why did I have to pay $8,206 to get home?

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Steve Miller thought he and his wife had valid tickets home. He had booked a Minneapolis-to-Dublin roundtrip through Orbitz, and when Aer Lingus canceled a segment, Orbitz rebooked them and confirmed the new itinerary. The My Trips page showed the change. The Aer Lingus app showed them booked. Everything said they were good to go. Then, at the gate in Dublin for the flight home, Aer Lingus refused to let them board, saying Orbitz had never properly confirmed the change. It turns out there is a critical difference most travelers never think about: a reservation holds a seat, but a ticket is the payment for it, and you can have a confirmation code with no valid ticket behind it. In the airline’s computer, the couple existed as passengers who had not technically paid. Stranded overseas and needing to get home that day, Miller was told the only seats left were in business class, at a price that ran into the thousands.

Muted digital illustration of a distressed man in a suit sitting with his head in his hands at an airport, blurred travelers passing behind him.

The $1,863 mistake: Why a missing last name cost one passenger his ticket

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Saurabh Kumar had a passport, a plane ticket, and a plan to visit family in Delhi. He was good to go, or so he thought. The trouble was hiding in plain sight on his passport: his full name sits in the given-name field, and the surname line is blank. That is ordinary in parts of the world, but a headache for Western airline systems that insist on a last name. When Expedia’s booking form demanded one, Kumar did what most people would do, he split his name into a first and a last and clicked buy. He had done it before and flown without a hitch. This time, at the Toronto airport, the Porter Airlines computer stopped him cold. The name on his ticket did not match the name on his passport, and to a security system built to screen millions against international watchlists, close enough is not enough. Porter said only the ticketing airline, Qatar Airways, could authorize a fix. Qatar was not at the counter. And the clock was running out.

Simple hand-drawn Bauhaus-inspired minimalist illustration on a white background showing a black line-drawing of an airplane taking off on the upper left and a small black line-drawing of a car on the lower right, separated by a single bold red diagonal line running corner to corner, symbolizing the widening divide between affluent air travelers spending more per trip and budget-conscious travelers priced out of summer vacations this year

The summer travel divide: How to find affordable vacations this year

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Summer travel intent has hit its lowest point since the pandemic. Deloitte’s latest summer travel survey found only 45 percent of travelers plan a summer vacation with paid lodging this year, the lowest figure in six years. Travel intent fell across every income bracket, but the drop among households earning under $100,000 was twice as steep as the decline among middle- and high-income earners, an 8-point drop versus 4 points each. The travelers still going plan to spend $4,069 on their summer vacations, up 17 percent from last year. Deloitte’s broader 2026 outlook calls this a bifurcation of standard and luxury travel and frames competition for the high-spending traveler as one of the year’s defining trends. Travelers earning between $100,000 and $199,000 show the biggest booking gap, with 37 percent fully booked versus 45 percent last year, leaving a large amount of unsold late-May inventory that revenue managers are aware of.

Editorial cartoon showing a confused customer holding out a credit card to a stern rental car counter agent who raises her hand to refuse it, with parked cars visible through the window in the background, depicting how Europcar agents pressure customers into buying duplicate insurance and refuse third-party coverage

Hotels.com and Europcar charged me twice for a one-way rental. Can I get my money back?

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Lawrence Signori prepaid Hotels.com $338 for a one-way Europcar rental in Porto, Portugal, with the one-way fee clearly included in his reservation. At pickup, the Europcar counter agent added $155 for the one-way fee, $155 for mandatory Premium Protection insurance, and a $97 Premium Station Surcharge despite his airport reservation. Europcar claimed only $243 of the prepayment was applied to the rental, with the rest going to Hotels.com as commission. Hotels.com initially provided only vague responses about the duplicate charges totaling $407.

Brenda Stopay rushes home from a cruise after learning her brother is critically ill, but a booking error caused her to miss her flight. Despite months of back-and-forth between Orbitz and Aer Lingus -- including submitting her brother’s death certificate repeatedly -- neither company will approve her $715 refund. Can she cut through the red tape and get a resolution?

Her brother was on his deathbed. Should Expedia refund her flight?

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Brenda Stopay rushes home from a cruise after learning her brother is critically ill, but a booking error caused her to miss her flight. Despite months of back-and-forth between Orbitz and Aer Lingus — including submitting her brother’s death certificate repeatedly — neither company will approve her $715 refund. Can she cut through the red tape and get a resolution?