August 23, 2011 New rules to help fliers
New rules took effect on Tuesday that will benefit the airline passenger:
1) Passengers involuntarily bumped from oversold flights will get more compensation. Under the new rules, busmped passengers can get up to $650 if the airline can get them to their destination with one or two hours of their originally scheduled arrival time for domestic flights or up to $1300 if they are delayed longer.
Previous limites were $400 and $800 respectively.
The new amounts will be adjusted every two years for inflation.
2) Current rules state that any domestic flight delayed more than three hours must allow passengers to get off the plane or face fines. International flights were exempt.
Now, international flights must abide by the same rules except they area allowed up to four hours before they must comply.
Exceptions are allowed for safety, security or air traffic control-related reasons.
3) If you pay to check a piece of luggage and the airline loses your bag, it must now refund the bag fee. This is in addition to them compensating passengers for lost or damaged baggage.
(Frank II)
Reader Comments (2)
What little optimist is in me might hope that only the prices of refundable tickets (assuming those are the likely no-shows) will be the ones going up.
The pessimist in me would point out that smaller and more regional airlines will carry a higher burden because they have fewer options to meet the arbitrary mandated time limits.
Or does someone believe that the airlines or their shareholders will just take bottom line cash and giddily give it away under government mandate?