From Hawaii flight delays, to cancelations, and egregious airline fees, “[People are being] ripped off; the goal is to level the playing field for our consumers.”
From Hawaii flight delays, to cancelations, and egregious airline fees, “[People are being] ripped off; the goal is to level the playing field for our consumers.”
Aloha. Sad to see the same old tired mantra about “protecting airline passengers” and “empowering regulators”. We all have the “right” to choose a different airline, use a separate mode of transportation, or simply refrain from traveling. De-regulation gave us more choices, cheaper fares, and better service and and basically allowed competition between airlines to offer air travel to the masses!
Ed Markey’s offer to re-regulate and protect us poor little peons from the evils of the airline industry is grandstanding at best and deceptive demagoguery at worst.
In the meantime, The FAA and its antiquated technology takes a close second to weather as to cause of flight delays. Be careful what you wish!
Making the offending airline pay actual money will go a long ways to solving many of the problems. They can probably depend that some fraction of the vouchers aren’t used. Having to provide cash refunds, food, and lodging (and so on) will directly impact the “bottom line” so they will then fix it.
I’d like to see the end to numerous flight changes “After” reservations have been made And payment made. To pay a premium price for a desired departure time, then have it rescheduled for 2-4 hours earlier or later is not acceptable.
My last trip to Hawaii I had at least 6 changes (different layover site, earlier departure when leaving home (changed from 9am, to 6am), later departure when returning (from 9pm to 11pm), resulting in 6 hour layover instead of 2…….turned into 7 as flight was delayed.
My only options from airline was to accept the change, cancel trip, or take a flight that was no longer a 1 stop trip, but 2-3 stops.
We all pay, one way or another.
Ticket costs will rise more than the “mandated” refunds.
Look at how much worse TSA has made travel, and tell me you believe more government rules will help.
Exactly. When the current passenger bill of rights was passed by Congress that implemented penalties for late flights, the airlines would simply cancel before the 3hr delay fines would have been imposed. Be careful what you wish for.
Aloha guys –
Wrt oversold flights – those are largely a thing of the past. Yes, it can happen when there are meltdowns, but airlines don’t routinely overbook anymore. Back in the day, you would call reservations and you could reserve a seat without payment. This necessitated the need to oversell because there were always those that didn’t show up. With payment required at the time of booking, that’s no longer the case.
Wrt interisland flights being delayed – The biggest culprit is the runway closure in HNL (as you know). When ATC enacts flow delay programs, it always impacts the closest airports first. International and even mainland flights are the last to be impacted by these programs.
Aloha