Biden wants cash to pax for cancelled flights
 

Standing in front of a mostly blank background containing simply the text “holding airlines accountable,” President Biden announced intentions to force airlines to pay cash to passengers whose flights have been cancelled for “controllable” reasons.

Having personally endured dozens of NYC/FL meltdowns and seen thousands flights cancelled due to the DOT’s chronic ineptitude and mismanagement of the ATC system, I noted there are no plans to require the government to provide cash to the many passengers whose flights are cancelled due to air traffic control failures.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/08/1174727479/flight-delay-cancellation-payments-to-passengers-transportation-department

What exactly is a controllable reason?

This is something I can absolutely get behind under certain circumstance listed below. Seeing some of the meltdowns at my airline even though weather related and dumping pax on the street to fend for themselves is atrocious. Some airlines do a decent job of accommodating while others take advantage of the lax rules to avoid costs. Too much have certain airlines had a poor operation as a cost saving measure and at the expense of pax. If airlines want to save money by not investing in and having a good operation it should cost them.

1 controllable delays or cancellations are specifically defined and specifically does not include weather or maintenance related, acts of nature and safety reasons

2 it becomes a crime to falsely label a controllable delay as uncontrollable to avoid compensation.

3 the compensations are just and and nonpunitive

no problem with any of that. But you’d be a fool not to expect the cost of that to be reflected in ticket prices. There is no free lunch and someone’s gotta pay. Not just for the hotel room and meals (which the airlines can probably get for a discount) but for the increased aircraft, maintenance personnel, and crews that will be sitting reserve as well.

Things cancelling for whatever reason bothers me way less than forcibly removing passengers (or denying boarding of passengers) due to oversale/weight restriction/seat inop/etc with a voucher, with an expiration date no less.

Auction up the space if it’s oversold to whoever will take the least, and pay cash.


Actual cancellations? Seems too hard to track what is controllable vs uncontrollable. I’ve certainly seen an airline manipulate the details of the “why” to make it a weather delay/cancellation versus a maintenance delay/cancellation… if that’s how we’re defining controllable vs uncontrollable.

Another "feel-good", not very-well-thought-out order from this administration. I fully expect the airlines to price this in to their ticket prices. When people start complaining about high ticket prices, point right at this administration, shrug, and say "sorry, cost of doing business. There's Greyhound across town..."

Biden literally wants to throw money at anything and everything that might help him get votes.

“I love the smell of spending other peoples’ money in the morning….. It smells like victory. Some day this spending is gonna end.”

This is literally the way DAL has been operating for last few years, they "bid" off extra pax in the form of an AMEX gift card good as cash for wherever amex is accepted. This winter alone I saw a family of 6 get "bought" off an oversold ATL-EGE flight with a guarantee for the next day to the tune of over $24K ($4K per ticket). That was for what they said was about $3K in tickets originally.

Lastly, SWA cancelled flights for three days this winter and said it was due to snow in Denver (WX). So "controllable" cancellations are going to be a little harder to pin down.

Good. Maybe now my airline will stop selling tickets for flights that we clearly don’t have the staffing for.

see to me having aircraft out of position because you had poor planning and poor operation are controllable. Shouldnt call is wx and uncontrollable if 4 days ago a storm caused cancellations and every aircraft and crew are out of position. Only call it uncontrollable if the direct inbound is delayed due to wx your departure city/enroute/arrival has wx causing a ground stop.

also delays triggering compensation should have a time on them such as over 4 hrs or something higher. A 1 hr delay shouldn’t trigger anything. It should be significant delays

at some point here (probably already happening) people are going to have to decide between buying food and buying airplane tickets. “Well meaning” policies like this have a real risk of not accomplishing anything actually meaningful for disrupted pax, but being very expensive with detrimental secondary impacts to employee groups.

Well they're winding down Spirit.

Dear Leader is protecting us from greedy corporations yet again. Rejoice comrades.

Regulation Nation is here.

Telling me you never read the fine print on the issued ticket. It's all there in black and white, albeit at pico-font. The ignorance here is on pax who fail to know the terms of conveyance. Perhaps the government should provide some education on that versus placing undo cost burden on airlines. But that would take away a talking point. Most delays (the government keeps stats on that stuff, its easily located at DoT) are due to weather events (acts of God) and/or ATC flow controls. Maintenance issues are usually handled pretty well by most carriers. This is nothing more than government interjecting itself into private business which usually ends up being catastrophic. Really bad idea.

Delta has entered the chat.

But, but, but I want to throw a temper tantrum. I want it my way. It is very common these days.

I too prefer the 2008 style of unregulated catastrophe. The weak and poor get what they deserve, amirite?

It's a great move if the DOT is also put under the gun to improve ATC infrastructure.

Name 1 policy.

I'll start:

Disney can no longer self-govern its land and properties to the extent that they were. They have to now actually follow State rules as it pertains to building codes and other benefits they had. Those benefits gave them a distinct advantage over the other recreational businesses in FL. (and there are many)


And we like our grade schoolers to learn Math, English and the Sciences vs. having a green haired goblin dedicate class time to pronouns and telling impressionable kids they can choose and change they'll gender at will. Do you know how easy it is to infiltrate the mind of a child. I could have one of my kids in surgery within a month if I so choose. Kids can be persuaded to do and think anything. (Except hopefully mine, mine shoot guns and know boys have a penis and girls have a vagina)

Interesting, Desantis went on local FL television and started reading one of the "banned books". Gender Queer, written by someone who looks like a mix of a boy and a girl. Local news had to cut the live feed for the inappropriate language and pictures in the book that they all thought should be ok for kids.

We also liked not having to wear masks, oh the horror.

absolutely

Interestingly, the 2nd and 3rd largest bank failures in history just occurred these last few months, how's that regulatory environment working out?

2008 happened because of faulty loans and a faulty credit rating agency that was allowed to capitalize on whatever credit score they chose to dole out for a new financial instrument called a credit default swap. (often AAA scores for property bundles that had some good loans and a bunch of over extended terrible loans)

Anyone who was dumb enough to take out a loan for $800k in CA and then put in a pool with their equity gains that happened a month after they bought on a 5/1 arm, all the while earning $50k as a tire service center employee, yeah pretty much should have to accept the consequences without the more intelligent purchasers bailing them out. I know I was taught about financials in school, as well as to not do drugs. Not my fault if others didn't listen.

A-B=C

A is your income,
B are your expenses
C is what's left over and that has to be positive to survive.

It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Forcing airlines to pay out when things go wrong isn’t remotely comparable to a global financial crisis.

This will just negatively effect middle and upper class travelers trying to go to Orlando in the name of equity.

meaning spirit isnt flying as many flights?
Because of up coming merger?
I havent been following that lately

It was aimed at his ridiculous insinuation about regulations being bad. It’s super ironic when I hear an airline pilot make a comment like that while they then go takeoff in an airplane with near-guaranteed performance requirements and capabilities due to……regulations.

Most here would’ve been dead long ago without them.

Apples to Oranges my lefty friend…huge differences here….

Not at all, my friend. A lack of guardrails (regulations) helped to create the 2008 meltdown. Implying that regulations are inherently bad, a misguided right wing talking point, is dumb. My friend.

We all agree there needs to be regulations that’s not what we are talking about. Needless and excessive regulations on the other hand….

100%


The axe in the cockpit yet still having to get "randomed" 8 outta 10 times.. comes to mind. Unless the point of security is to prevent drug trafficking, which last I checked wasn't what TSA was for.

It took Obama more than 6 years before things even came close to looking like a turnaround, with near zero interest rates (artificial fiscal prosperity). How are we doing with Joe in there the last 2.5 yrs. Seems things are just peachy right? I know I feel united with his Ultra-MAGA white supremacy talk. I'll take the 2016-March 2020 Orange Man Bad period. Things sure seemed pretty darn good.

The regulations put in place have been ignored by this administration. Every bank is back stopped.

I like it.

I’m tired of apologizing to pax for preventable poor performance, it’s embarrassing. Also, the regulations as proposed seem very fair. AND this is a NPRM, so an actual reg is easily many months away. There’s plenty of time for management to fix ops to prevent gross delays. Doesn’t seem like a tall order the week after everyone reported very strong Q1 demand.

Selfishly, it would quite possibly make my life better, I’m also sick of hours long delays, reroutes, and minimum overnights.

Seems to me that airline execs have made the implicit decision over the last year to not really care about customer satisfaction, because hey, where are they gonna go in this seat constrained environment? I know you guys care deeply about safety, competence, and being on-time. Wouldn’t it be great If management cared about the quality of their product too? Would be nice to have pride in my employer.

These regulations are nothing more than an attempt to find something that appeals to voters because they’ve failed at everything else. This will be a big backfire also with lots of loopholes for airlines.

Again, irony.

Do you know how much MORE money our companies could pocket if they didn’t have to deal with all of these excessive regulations? 10 hours minimum rest? 1500 hours to get an ATP? Forced retirement at 65? The government should butt out and let the industry set the bar. I’m sure it will all be okey-dokey. :rolleyes:



Username checks out.

So you’re saying it has to be either ALL regulations are good or NO regulations are good. There is no middle ground.

I see.

No, I'm making fun of the people who appear to believe that. Keep up.

I guess I failed to see anyone here that appeared to believe that.

Yeah, regulating banks and forcing them to give mortgages to people who couldn’t afford it was a huge success!

As others have said, there is room for some sensible regulation on this topic, but dollars to doughnuts this administration will majorly overreach. No one in DC ever seems to mention that one big reason for increased flight cancellations is the Tarmac Delay Program penalties Congress saddled the airlines with last time they decided to 'help' the hapless air traveler through regulation (Passenger Bill of Rights, anyone?) :rolleyes:

It's best to read a contract before you sign one (that includes purchasing a commodity.) Or at least google.

Ignorance is a sin.

2008 was caused by too much gov interference. We shouldn't have bailed anyone out.

But I guess some people need daddy gov to govern them harder.