The notice period for the US passenger bill of rights is now up and the regulations have been in force since Thursday 29 April 2010.

For USA domestic flights, airlines now have certain obligations once an on-ground onboard wait reaches 3 hours (ie 3 hours since boarding completed and not yet taken off, or 3 hours since landing and not yet disembarked).  For international flights departing from USA (or on US-based airlines), obligations are less specified but every airline must have their own published policies dealing with significant delays.  Note small aircraft (under 30 seats) are exempt.

Link to the US regulation here.

Passenger bill of rights (PBOR) are coming into effect in USA 29th April.  See my previous post on US passenger bill of rights for an overview of the consumer benefits & traps coming into effect.

The new rules for airlines haven’t even started yet and already Delta and JetBlue are asking for an exemption for the period that a main runway will be closed at New York JFK airport (planned to be until end June).

It will be interesting to see whether or not the exemption is granted.

If the airlines are not given an exemption then the airlines will likely cut more flights for the next 4 months than the 10% they have already temporarily dropped.  If this means the airport remains functional instead of grinding to a halt as predicted whenever the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, then that is good for travellers.

If an exemption is given then it sends a message to airlines that they can argue special circumstances to avoid the requirements. While that improves flexibility, it is a slippery slope and will require a balancing act by DOT.

Either way, the implications affect not just those flying to or from New York JFK as knock-on impacts of delays and cancellations cascade out to other hubs and regional airports.

Hat tip to Philly Road Warrior.

Qantas’ low cost subsidiary Jetstar has expanded their “Price Beat Guarantee” into a 10 point Jetstar Customer Guarantee.

The 10 points cover a range of issues and promise some minimum standards and offers of $50 or $100 in Jetstar credit for certain negative events.

I’m not impressed.

Some points are non sequiturs.  Who ever heard of an airline not promising to make safety a priority?

Some points are already covered under general consumer laws and add no consumer protection. If a pre-pay option is not received then a refund will be made.  Later on there is a point about refunds being 15 working days after Jetstar has agreed to make the refund – 3 weeks not including time to investigate and decide on a refund is an inordinate amount of time.

Some points are self-contradictory. Point 7 is about how quickly complaints are responded to. It starts out by saying first point of contact will try to resolve. If that is unsuccessful then you are referred to their Call Centre. If that doesn’t work then you have to make a “written” complaint, whicch can only be made via their website. They then give themselves 15 working days after receipt of the written complaint to respond. By this time it could be well over a month after the problem. How many people would just give up by this lengthy and complicated process?

Some points are vague and meaningless. The point on dealing with cancellations and delays has so many clauses and conditions it is unclear what happens in all the different circumstances. Furthermore there is no requirement for alternative flights or other options to be acceptable to the passengers. For example in the event of overbooking Jetstar could tell the customer they are rebooked on the next available flight, which happens to be next week, and the passenger has no recourse to force rebooking on another airline or claim compensation. This is because the point is committing Jetstar to a process for informing passengers and not committing to providing satisfactory alternatives or compensation.

I give the charter a score of 2 out of 10, with one mark gained for raising public awareness of the need for a minimum level of passenger protections.

When the US Passenger Bill of Rights (PBOR) were published last month I posted a brief mention but did not explain how they benefit flyers and how they have some limitations.

Overall approach

The US rights (link to full text here) are less comprehensive than the corresponding EU rights (EU regulation 261/2004) in that certain standards are left up to airlines to define and publish as policies. Ie the rule is there must be a policy and it must be published, but airlines are free to set their own standards in some respects.

That is not good for consumers. We already have variability in airline contract of carriage which also must be published, but such a miniscule proportion of flyers read them that there really is no competition between airlines to provide terms that are great for their customers.

Onboard on the ground time limited to 3 hours

There are some parts of the PBOR which are relatively set. Airlines cannot keep passengers onboard on the ground for more than 3 hours for domestic flights, or more than a time of their choosing (which must be published) for international flights. There are exemptions where the airport agrees that immediate disembarkation will be highly disruptive to airport operations. This clause is open to interpretation – it could be that airlines routinely are exempt due to inconvenience, or perhaps not.

At congested airports, in poor weather, and in unusual circumstances a rigourous enforcement of the time limit may result in more crowded terminals (boarding delayed if a risk of exceeding the 3 hours), more flight cancellations and reduced flights more generally. I’m not sure this is necessarily good for travellers.

Publish contingency plans

The PBOR has a requirement for airlines to publish contingency plans for every airport they fly to including any diversion airports, and to be accountable to passengers for following those contingency plans.

This seems to me to be a complete waste of time. Either the contingency plans published will be specific and then result in messy litigation afterwards when they are not followed properly, or they will be written as vague as possible to ensure the airline has sufficient flexibility to deal with varying circumstances and thus the airline can never be held accountable for errors in dealing with irregular operations. I much prefer the European approach which sets out what airlines must do at a minimum, for passengers affected by cancellations and delays. The question of how that is achieved is left to each airline to resolve.

Publish on-time performance

Every flight bookable on the airline website must include reference or a link to information on on-time performance of that flight. The PBOR sets out the required stats which includes cancellations as well as significant delays. The Department of Trade (DOT) will monitor flights which have excessively bad on-time performance and take punitive action against the airline (after 4 months with 50+% of flights 30+ minutes late arriving).

It is pleasing to see that DOT recognise that arrival time is more important than departure time. However, these requirements are likely to see even more schedule padding than already exists. While this makes valid connections easier to be made, it does have the disadvantages of making some connections which are currently legal (ie more than minimum connection times) illegal and thus reduces options for travellers.

How much benefit for flyers?

As with the EU regulation 261/2004, how well the US Passenger Bill of Rights works in practice will depend on interpretation by airlines and by the regulator, as well as the regulator’s enforcement (or lack of) of the rules. In the EU the general impression is initially the regulations were not well enforced (airlines routinely using safety and circumstances out of their control exemptions) but it seems to have improved slightly over the past year or so. However, still many airlines do not meet the requirements – for example in the recent weather disruptions there are reports several airlines did not provide their customers with information on their minimum rights nor did they provide those automatically.

So, it probably is up to all the travelling public to be aware of our rights and demand airlines provide them when they are supposed to. Hopefully DOT will publish a handy leaflet which we can carry, much as EU has.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

I’m not referring to a flight returning to origin but one that didn’t even leave.

The information from flightstats on British Airways flight BA227 to Atlanta makes for sorry reading. Scheduled departure time from London Heathrow was 2:05pm. My comments are enclosed in [ and ].

At 1:10pm, arrival time updated from 6:31pm to 6:29pm.
[An hour before departure the flight is on time.]

At 1:40pm, departure time updated from 2:05pm to 2:30pm (with corresponding adjustment to arrival time).
[A minor delay, perhaps due to use of a remote stand.]

At 2:35pm, departure time updated from 2:30pm to 2:45 pm.
[Another minor delay.]

At 3:05pm, departure time updated from 2:45pm to 3:00pm.
[The update has occurred a bit late but BA confident delay is not serious.]

At 10:54pm, flight status changed by London Heathrow airport to cancelled.
[Oops. 9 hours after boarding the airport records the cancellation of the flight instead of the airline.]

At 11:10pm, departure time recorded by BA as 6:52pm.
[End of flightstats record.]

The last record clearly is inconsistent with the previous one. Departure time being recorded many hours after the supposed time of departure is suspicious. It indicates the aircraft pushed back but didn’t actually depart.

A passenger account on Flyer Talk is consistent with this, and reports that they were onboard for about 9 hours before the flight was cancelled.

Under EU regulation 261/2004 passengers are entitled to care under Article 8, Article 9(1)(a), 9(1)(b), 9(1)(c) and 9(2), and Article 7. Out of hours crew is not a valid exemption to Article 7 under the extraordinary circumstances waiver, but maintenance might be. The other Articles have no such exemptions and so must apply. Article 7 provides 600 euros compensation. Article 8 provides right for passengers to choose between refund of fare or relevant portion of fare (plus flight to return to origin for those who are in the middle of their tickets), or a re-routing under comparable conditions (ie same class of travel) at earliest opportunity. Article 9 requires free meals for the waiting time, hotel accommodation, transfer to and from accommodation, and 2 phone calls/faxes/emails.

Under the new USA passenger bill of rights, passengers would almost certainly have been returned to the terminal around 4:30pm or 6 hours earlier than they actually were.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

My 2008 travel year ended on a sour note with many flights being involuntary downgraded from business class to economy class or premium economy class.

British Airways’ subsidiary Comair downgraded my flights Johannesburg to Windhoek and return to economy class only. For the flight to Windhoek I was given a voucher for a token amount denominated in Rand. The voucher can only be used through a BA contact centre. Last time I had one, the flights cost considerably more than the same flights bookable online or via other airlines with the difference exceeding the value of this voucher. Thus the voucher is close to worthless to me. For the return flight I received no compensation at all.

Late last year LAN removed business class from all of their intra-South American flights except those operated with 767 aircraft, and replaced it with premium economy. I had lots of A320 flights booked. LAN had reseated me in economy rather than premium economy and didn’t contact me about this at all, but as I regularly check my itineraries using tools such as CheckMyTrip (see also blog entries on checking and on the various itinerary tools) I discovered this for myself. On calling LAN I was able to be put into premium economy class, but they claimed no compensation is due for the downgrades.

This rankles me. In many countries there are consumer protection laws to address the imbalance when suppliers do not provide the good or service that was paid for. For example, the EU regulation 261/2004 article 10 covering all EU-based airlines as well as all other flights from EU requires a minimum refund for downgrades, with the refund percentage based on distance. Yet some airlines think they can simply not offer the class of service that was paid for. Okay it is not as bad as an involuntary denied boarding. I still flew the flights I had booked. However, based on the logic of these airlines, this means any first or business class ticket, which may cost many thousands more than economy class, gives no assurance of any extra comfort or service beyond that offered in economy class. That doesn’t feel right.

By the way, there is another form of “downgrade” where an airline has markedly different products and switches from a better one to a worse one after you’ve bought the ticket. In this case I think the only compensation due is any fare difference (eg Singapore Airlines generally charges more to fly in first or business class on their A380). Of course, if Air NZ offers something for changing my upcoming Japan flight from 777 (business premier with private fully flat suites) to 767 (old business class narrow cradle seats), then I won’t complain. But I don’t expect anything because I am still flying in business class.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Thanks to a tip-off from Rick Seaney, I learned today that the Department of Transportation (DOT) has improved airline passenger rights in USA. No, this is not the passenger bill of rights that some have been calling for and has been on and off in the news for months.

Rather, the rules for compensation for denied boarding (or involuntary denied boarding aka IDB) are being improved 25 years after they were set. The press release is light on details but refers to compensation limits being doubled and also extended to include 30 to 59 seat aircraft (the old rules only covered 60+ seat aircraft. The detail (and reasoning) can be found on the DOT website here.

In summary.

Old rules – 100% of ticket value to next stopover to max $200 if delay is 1-2 hours (1-4 hours for international), 200% to max $400 if delay is over 2 (or 4 for international) hours. This on top of the provision of transport or refund. Only applies to aircraft with 60+ seats.

New rules – as above but with $400 and $800 limits. DOT acknowledges this increase does not fully reflect inflation. Only applies to aircraft with 30+ seats.

Under the new rules an exemption applies for aircraft with 30 to 59 seats where for safety reasons either a smaller aircraft must be substituted or payload restricted. Hopefully this exemption does not get abused by airlines (eg by excessive overbooking in situations where payload restrictions are reasonably forseeable or likely) as much as European airlines trying to wiggle out of their EU passenger rights compensation obligations.

The rules don’t come into effect for at least another 30 days, but it is promising that DOT refers to next month. So while the exact date isn’t yet published it should be before 1 June 2008.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Jet Blue has succumbed to the complaints about a meaningless term (eg my earlier post, over at Upgrade: Travel Better, etc) and has now defined Controllable Irregularities (thanks to Flight Wisdom for this news).

From the Jet Blue contract of carriage:

Controllable Irregularity as used in Section 36, means a delay, cancellation, or
diversion that is not caused by Force Majeure Event. For the sake of clarity, if
in a chain of multiple events, the original irregularity is due to a Force
Majeure Event, the cause of the subsequent event(s) reasonably related to the
original irregularity shall be deemed an Uncontrollable Irregularity.

Force Majeur Event mean an event(s) outside of Jet Blue’s
reasonable contol and includes, but is not limited to, weather conditions; acts
of government or airport authorities (eg Air Traffic Control Delays, runway
closures, airport construction); acts of God; US military or airlift emergency
or substantially expanded US military airlift requirements, as determined by the
US government; grounding of a substantial number of aircraft as a result of
activation of the US Civil Reserve Air Fleet; strikes or labor unrest; civil
commotions, embargoes, wars or other hostilities, whether actual, threatened or
reported; government regulation, demand or requirement; damage to aircraft
caused by a third party; emergency situation requiring care, protection or
response to protect person or property or any event that is not reasonably
foreseen, predicted or anticipated by Jet Blue.

So let’s see how the incident that prompted Jet Blue to draw up their Passenger Bill of Rights (PBOR) would fare. Gosh it was originally caused by bad weather therefore no liability. Indeed I am struggling to think of many situations where Jet Blue couldn’t use the chain of events get out of jail free clause.

I can see the chain of events potentially being misused. For example suppose bad weather 2 days ago so messed up the schedules with aircraft in the wrong places and crew hours affected. Even though the weather today is fine, there may still be knock-on impacts. Some of these may have been avoidable, in the eyes of the consumer, by for example having more back-up crew.

How any one would think this puffery is enough to stop calls for regulation is beyond me.

Edited (thanks to Cranky Flier). Jet Blue has made a significant improvement on their first version. Now Controllable Irregularities applies to cancellations and departure delays before push-back from the gate. All other delays are subject to compensation regardless of cause. That is good news and gives the PBOR the teeth it needed, although the different treatment of departure delays and ground delays on departure does give an odd incentive for Jet Blue to delay pushing back.

Jet Blue have also clarified that refunds exclude taxes and fees, and the same applies to vouchers offered for compensation to the value of the fare for the longer delays. Boo.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

The Cranky Flier has been in touch with Jet Blue over the meaning of Controllable Irregularities (see Jet Blue’s Passenger Bill of Rights). And apparently they have decided not to define the term. Hello big gaping hole in their trumpeted PBOR.

This brings to mind a piece from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass“.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. “It means just what I choose it to mean – neither more or less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Jet Blue has today announced it’s own voluntary passenger bill of rights (PBOR) – which will be highlighted prominently on its website (at least for now). Further they have decided to apply it retrospectively to those affected by delays last week.

The details are:

Cancellations

• Passengers have the choice of full refund or put on alternative Jet Blue flights at no cost.
• If cancelled at less than 12 hours notice due to Controllable Irregularity (whatever that means as it isnt defined in the PBOR), passengers will also get a Jet Blue voucher for the fare paid.

Is this on top of the full refund/rebooking?

Delays

If Controllable Irregularity (that term again), then delay of:

• 1-2 hours = $25 Jet Blue voucher
• 2-4 hours = $50 Jet Blue voucher
• 4-6 hours = Jet Blue voucher for the fare paid (one way)
• 6+ hours = Jet Blue voucher for the fare paid (round trip)

Involuntary Denied Boarding

$1000 if the result of overbooking.

Ground Delays

Once passengers spend 5 hours onboard Jet Blue will deplane.

Ground delays of:

• 30-60 minutes on arrival = $25 Jet Blue voucher
• 1-2 hours on arrival = $100 Jet Blue voucher
• 2-3 hours on arrival = Jet Blue voucher for fare paid (one way)
• 4+ hours on arrival = Jet Blue voucher for fare paid (round trip)
• 3-4 hours on departure = $100 Jet Blue voucher
• 4+ hours on departure = Jet Blue voucher for fare paid (round trip)

Contract of Carriage

Jet Blue intends to incorporate their PBOR into their contract of carriage.

My comments

It is a start and by putting it into the contract of carriage it will have binding impact (at least until contract of carriage wording is changed). That is good.

Not so good the unequal treatment of delays on departure and arrival – what were they thinking? Apart from involuntary denied boarding (IDB) the compensation is wholly in vouchers, which effectively devalues it significantly and imposes a lesser penalty on itself than cold hard cash would do.

Thirdly, the longer delays providing compensation in the amount of one-way vs round-trip fare is odd – not everyone travels round trips any more and some fares could be ridiculously low. How will someone on a say $80 fare feel being given a voucher for $80 after a 5 hour delay? Not happy I would guess.

It will be interesting to see the reactions to this airline PBOR.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.